The Assassin Dance
by DarkDanny
Summary: PTSD Series: Murder and conspiracy has a way of drawing opposites together to a common purpose. It's 2169 and Officer Vetara Calarian is about to be pulled into a dance she never wanted to be a part of. Thankfully for her, her partner is more than qualified to lead her through it. Female Turian and Human male centric.
1. Chapter One

**Look whose back. It's almost as though your response to Eden warranted this!**

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 **Chapter One**

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"This is off-duty officer Vetara Calarian, badge number 1685491. There's been a shooting at Galanian Ward 37 inside of the Astral Café. Suspect is a batarian male, on foot, about 1.8 meters tall dressed in a blue and red jumpsuit. Victims are a human female adult, human male adolescence, human female child, all dead on arrival. I am currently in pursuit of the suspect! Send back up, over!"

" _Copy that, officer; we have units incomings to your location."_

Her off-duty pistol drawn, Officer Vetara Calarian bolted through the wards, ignoring the gawkers and screaming civilians as she charged after the fleeing assassin. That was what the mass killing had been: a blatant assassination in broad daytime in a room full of café patrons.

She had witnessed the crime in action. She was on her way home after a fourteen hour shift and had stopped at the café for a pick-up. The victims had been sitting at a table a ways off. They were laughing and chatting animatedly as humans generally did. She paid it not real attention until the batarian walked into the café, raised his pistol and shot the three of them execution style. It was a horrifying display of violence which made even a season officer like her pause. The batarian proceeded to leave before she even had a chance to identify herself and took off when she did.

She pushed it to the back of her mind and carried on. This perpetrator had to be stopped before he did any more harm. He had done something far more dangerous then he realized – or perhaps he did it because of it – he killed humans in a primarily alien ward. The humans were still newcomers to the citadel, treated with suspicion and outright hatred. The humans in turn were particularly sensitive to crimes committed against their people. The rallying cry of 'hate crime' was a common call they resorted to.

In this case, however, it would be a completely justifiable use. Killing children was an act of pure evil in her eyes. Why this batarian did it, it just had to been motivated by recent events. Most notably of which was the growing System's Alliance expansion into the Skyllian Verge. The Hegemony was crying foul at every chance it could. It was only a matter of time before disgruntled batarians decided to take it out on common humans as though they had been to blame for their government's policies. Nothing the Alliance did could justify what this batarian had done.

Pushing through another gathering of volus and salarians, Vetara raised her pistol and entered through a side alley leading to maintenance juncture of the ward. The batarian was likely going to try and make a break for it through the Keeper tunnels. She would if she was in his position. It would have been the surest way to the docking bays for a quick evacuation from the station.

A sudden strike to the back of her head winded the turian. Her legs gave out and she fell hard to the floor. Vetara looked up found the batarian had hit her with a stun baton. As he brought the baton back down on her, she managed to roll to one side, the weapon smacking against the ground

Dazed, Vetara attempted to raise her gun, only to get the weapon kicked clean out of her hand. Snapping her leg out, she kicked the batarian, dropping him to a knee. With him down, she immediately launched herself on top of the suspect and attempted to subdue the criminal. She had left her restraints in her locker. Nothing short of excessive physical force was going to subdue him.

Rearing his head back, the batarian head butted her, dazing her long enough for the batarian to escape her clutches and turn the tables on her, pinning her down underneath him, his knee slamming into her neck in order to keep her in place. Vetara heaved, trying to breath, her fist punching the batarian in the side. The Batarian had to have been using some sort of narcotic. Red sand perhaps… Whatever it had been, he was shrugging off blows that would debilitate most normal people under similar circumstances.

As Vetara punched him over and over where a batarian kidney should have been located, the batarian reared his baton back up and crashed it against her faceplate, her vision suddenly blurred from the blood now blinding her. She could not help it but cry out in agony from the hit. Through the blood, the officer could see the batarian baring his teeth as though he was amused by the whole thing.

Through her dazed state, she watched the batarian draw a knife on her and brought it down at her. Vetara reached out and grabbed his wrist as he tried to plunge it into her. Her eyes wide as she struggled to breathe and struggled to resist against the wild eyed batarian.

Without warning, a large mass collided into the batarian above her, knocking the bastard off her, his knife sliding a good metre or so away from the suspect. Wiping the blood off her face, Vetara unsteadily brought herself back to her feet and watched in a mixture of shock and satisfaction as the batarian was being knocked around senseless by what appeared to have been an unarmoured human. His bare fist slamming into the batarian's face with a sickening crack over and over. He was ignoring the Batarian gurgling, drowning in his own blood as blow after blow broke tenderized his face.

Holding the batarian by his throat, the human reached into the back of his open jacket and produced a sidearm. He placed the weapon against the Batarian's forehead. The weapon kicked her senses back into high gear. She raised her weapon and aimed it at the human.

"C-Sec!" she identified herself to the human. "Drop your weapon and stand up. Back away from the suspect and place your hands over your head!"

The human froze in place, as if only now realizing she had been a member of C-Sec, his head bouncing slightly as though he had been frustrated. He did, however, obliged to her order. Pulling the weapon away from the gasping, brutalized batarian, the human threw the weapon back in her direction and stood up, his hands over his head as he stepped away and turned to face her.

Using her forearm to wipe the blood out of her vision, Vetara inspected the human carefully. Iris colours were green, he was taller than her, and said something when she herself was pushing two meters tall. He had short black hair that was buzzed on the sides and long on top; his face was covered in dark fuzz. He wore some sort of soft clothing. A suit she supposed. It was black with a matching black under shirt.

As much as his physical appearance had screamed he wasn't someone to take lightly, it was his expression that really sealed her hypothesis. It was hard… stone cold. It was like he found the position he was in to be a nuisance. He wasn't in the least bit intimidated by her and it was very likely that Vetara wasn't the first person who had pulled a weapon on him in order to keep him from inflicting bloody violence or murder.

While he was dangerous on outward appearance, Vetara decided that the man whom had saved her wasn't an immediate threat. Deciding to trust his intent, Vetara lowered her gun and placed her foot on the chest of the squirming batarian, who was attempting to breath. As the batarian struggled to get up, she gave the bastard a solid kick in the side, knocking him back down.

"You're under arrest for triple first degree murder, assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest and fleeing the scene of the crime." She read him the charges, her voice rasping as she struggled to ignore the pain shooting through her and the eyes of the intense human staring at her. "You have a right to an advocate and your silence will not be infringed upon… even if you're a murdering pile of shit."

Ignoring the growl of the batarian as she ' _accidentally'_ increased the pressure on his chest, Vetara looked up and directed her focus to the human still standing in front of her with his hands in front of him. Her weapon remained directed at him, but was lowered. The implication of the deadly force remained.

Silently she stared at the human, his hands still up. On the day of her graduation of C-Sec academy, her father had instilled in her lesson and that was not to place her pride above her life. She was grateful for the help with the batarian, even if it came in the form of a human. But while she had felt a certain amount of gratitude for the human for intervening when she had, he had still had to answer for the weapon he pulled. His actions warranted some reprieve from her part. She would at the very least hear him out.

"You have training," she observed, finally addressing the man. "Do you have any sort of identification? I'll need a permit for that weapon as well."

The human lowered his hands slowly, with Vetara keeping a close eye on the man as he activated his omni-tool to transfer his credentials to her. She activated her own omni-tool and scanned the information he had sent her.

"Jack Hansen, with First Wave Security Services," he introduced himself as she read the information and the concealed carry permit he had been licenced for. "We've been contracted for the Alliance embassy security..."

Vetara looked up and narrowed her eyes at the man. The man standing in front of her did not look the part of being a soldier of fortune.

"You're a mercenary?" she inquired, her voice hardened as she examined him.

Jack Hansen narrowed his eyes, his lip curling to reveal white, blunted teeth. The very suggestion that he was a mercenary was clearly offensive to his sensibilities.

"I'm not some lunatic gun-for-hire any more then you are a glorified security officer, _officer_ ," he growled back at her, not in the least bit impressed by her implication, nor by her jurisdictional authority. "I'm a private military contractor, and you have a bigger problem than my occupation. That woman killed by that Blink was Karin Novichkov, the children Alexi and Cassandra. They were Diplomat Pyotr Novichkov's immediate family. We told her on repeated occassions she was not to leave the safety of embassy without an escort… We should have expected this. Citadel Security has no respect for human safety..."

The suggestion the human named Jack Hansen had made about preferential law enforcement protection shook Vetara with a fury she rarely felt. How dare this bastard ape stand there and make the suggestion that C-Sec would skimp on protection to a species simply because they were human. It was sheer delusion on his part.

"If that was the case, then why did I pursue him for murdering humans?" she demanded to know, the anger in her voice on full display. "Acting like a victim is not going to get you anywhere!"

Before Hansen could reply and turn the squabble into a full blown war of words, the sound of a gasp caught their attention. They looked and found the restrained batarian turning pale and clammy. His body convulsing as he gripped his threat. Vetara flew into a panic and released her grip on the batarian and dropped down to his side to run a diagnosis on him.

As the batarian went limp and stopped breathing, Vetara wrapped her Talons together and began compressions. She was stopped, however, when the human grabbed her by the back of her armour and pulled her off him. She tried to fight back, but the human had the advantage in positioning and he was physically unharmed unlike she had been. With relative ease, Jack Hansen shoved Vetara hard into the ground and took her place at the batarian's side.

Vetara rounded back on Hansen; she was ready to rip into the human for interfering with the life-saving procedure of her detainee when she found the human reaching out, his hands prying open the dying batarian's mouth to reveal the murky bile he was drowning in. Hansen grabbed the knife the batarian had dropped and used it as a prodding instrument.

"See that? That's a broken enamel capsule," Hansen remarked, tapping a missing tooth. "He ingested a toxin of some sort. This is all going well beyond a simple hit, officer."

Vetara remained silent, she was not about to let the human know she was thankful for him potentially saving her life yet again by keeping her out of contact with the poison the batarian had ingested. The human did not look as though it had even registered that he held that belief as she did. If he did, he wasn't showing it. It was for the best, she would deal out gratitude later if it called for it… and if this miserable human took his words back about C-Sec.

Together, the two of them watched as the batarian died, his eyes wide in fear in his last moment, staring up at the human looking down at him. Vetara looked away and Hansen dropped the knife and stood back up, straightening his suit jacket out. His expression contorted into one of anger. Understandable, when the assassin was dead, taking with him the only clear lead to the plotters - if that was the case – leaving them both in the dark when it came to a motive.

Shaking his head, Jack Hansen turned away, reaching into his jacket and producing a pack of cigarettes. His omni-tool was activated as he seemed to be dreading to make a call to his superiors. Silently, Vetara tried to bury that uncomfortable feeling that her life had just gotten exponentially more complicated.

Looking back on this day, Vetara would be proven right, for better or for worse.

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 **I got a really solid response from Eden, and it did wonders to get the creative juices flowing again. I'd been doing quarian and human writing for so long it grew formulaic. So after I completed the last Eden Chapter I went for a run and this plan came to mind. It's going to end up longer then Eden, but it will be the same length per chapter and unlike much of my work it will be told from a single point of view - that of Officer Vetara Calarian.**

 **For my sake, I think I'm going to try to slow down the release updates to a chapter every couple of days. The speed Eden came out left me with headaches. I mean I liked it, but I was writing at a furious speed.**

 **I wanted to thank DapperT for his support and would highly recommend you take a look at his story. 'The Means To Survival'. It's shaping up to be fine read!**

 **Anyways, thank you for reading, and I hope to release more soon.**


	2. Chapter Two

**What a response for such a short introduction. Fanfiction website is shitting the bed again. Hopefully they get their act together.**

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 **Chapter Two**

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Hating that her third month anniversary of joining C-Sec was done dealing with a grieving husband and father, Vetara Calarian downed her drink and tried to ignore the little voice in the back of her head reminding her of her failure of today.

That batarian had gotten the jump on her. It was a stupid, rookie mistake which she got reprimanded for by her superiors. And rightly so, she had forgotten to check her damn corners and was beaten senseless for it. Vetara would not forget this, and would learn from this experience. Once Captain Faylx finished ripping her part, she gave her testimony to the investigation team and was carted off to the local medical clinic for treatment.

It was still a struggle to handle what she had seen only a few hours ago. Witnessing murder must have been a challenge under any circumstances, but to see a family so callously murdered while they were eating and laughing… in her twenty-four years of life she had never seen anything like that before and she hoped she never would have to again.

She glanced up past her drink to look at the only reason she hadn't paid her tab and head back to her place for a quiet evening at home instead of noisy nightclub she was sitting in. Sitting far off from her was _him_.

' _Him'_ had a name: He was Johannes Hansen or ' _Jack_ ' as he was calling himself. He had been born in human city state of Odense, Denmark, Earth date 12/06/2133. He had spent five years in the Alliance, making it to Gunnery Chief before he was honourably discharged. A lot of his records were sealed. Not so much out of secrecy, but she was a non-human accessing an Alliance database from a remote site.

After she got out of the hospital, the first thing she did was head to the Presidium to keep an eye on the human embassy to keep an eye him. It took several hours but Hansen left the embassy, she followed him, keeping a relative distance away from the human. She was a little proud of her sleuthing ability. It was something which she developed since youth, which lead to her father suggesting a career in law enforcement.

As for the man right now, Johannes… Jack… whatever he wanted to be called was sitting at the bar, a drink in one hand and his head resting in his hand in the other as though he was attempting to catch some sleep. He had been sitting there for the better part of an hour. He hadn't touched his drink during the whole time he was there. He seemed to have been ignoring everything in his vicinity, from the krogan bartender to the asari and human females chatting animatedly to one another next to him. He wasn't there for blowing off the tension of the day. It seemed like he was just there so that he wasn't alone.

It made him appear to be sort of… lonely to be completely honest.

Silently, Vetara wondered what it was that drove a professional soldier into the arms of a mercenary group… private military contractors… whatever it was he euphemized his mercenary title with. He wasn't Eclipse or the rising Blue Suns, so she supposed he held himself to a somewhat higher standard.

While she investigated him, Vetara took a look at First Wave Security Services as well. Its hands were unsurprisingly dirty morally, but legally clean. Most of their contracted work was done on Earth actually. Apparently humans were still engaging in local wars with one another, although it was at a significantly reduced rate according to the records. Brushfire wars, as the humans called them. Still, to be fighting against each other even after making contact with other advance species seemed so... krogan... primitive. First Wave was only contracted off Earth two galactic years ago as a response to the increasing paranoia of the humans dealing in alien politics.

Today, it seemed, their paranoia was proven correct and now a diplomat's family had been murdered and the murderer took his own life leaving behind more questions then answers. It smelled like a plot from one of those stupid conspiracy movies, but here it was unfolding in front of her eyes.

Honestly, she could empathize with those that weren't particularly thrilled with humans. She was an adolescence when the Relay 314 incident occurred and between the humans startling the Hierarchy and her father, it was only natural for a daughter of that age to be heavily influenced by her father's opinion on the new race. His policy was a clear one: Don't trust them.

It was an undeniable truth that human influence on Citadel politics and Citadel space as a whole was growing at an exponential rate. Most races slowly integrated into the union, but the humans… they just ripped right into the Citadel politics and shook everything up. Their fleet were steadily expanding, they were bypassing treaties, getting deep into biotic training, and she even heard rumours of illegal artificial intelligence research. A serious breach in policy which the humans might have been flouting.

Humans, Vetara's father concluded, were trouble on a massive scale, but the thing that really worried him was that this was only the beginning. What sort of influence the humans would have only a decade from now, he shuddered to think.

As for Vetara herself, she was a little more forgiving to the newcomers in recent times. It sort of came from her new career policing on the Citadel. Most of the humans she dealt with were relatively courteous, if a little confused about what sort of pronouns they used with her. They weren't very good at figuring out a turian's gender even after said turian was talking. It was a sort of forgivable gaffe considering the vast difference in the sexual dimorphism between human males and females. Still there was a sort of annoyance when she got called ' _sir_ ' and she corrected them, and almost always it would be an awkward moment between them.

Drinking another mouthful, she looked up and found that the human was no longer sitting. He was out of his seat and approaching her booth, his eyes locked onto her like he was on mission. She felt her chest tighten up as a cold realization washed over her: She hadn't been following him. He had been leading her…

Ignoring the urge to panic, Vetara composed herself the best she could as quickly as she could. She also ignored the urge to look him in the eye and instead she turned away her eyes locking onto the glass whiskey between her talons.

The human stopped, looming above her. He did not say a word to her. It was as though he was awaiting her invitation or permission perhaps. Whatever it had been, it was clear he was waiting on her to make the first contact between the two of them. As much as she wanted to maintain a certain degree of control over the situation, she just wanted those green eyes to stop burning into her.

"Can I help you?" Vetara finally addressed the human named Jack Hansen.

She watched as the man's face twisted upwards as though he had been amused by her admittedly stupid sounding attempt to act as though the two of them didn't know each other.

"Oh, don't even pretend you don't know me, officer. It's so unbecoming to the both of us," he spoke in a low, rumbling tone as he craned his head slightly forward as though he was being conspiratorial with her.

Vetara did not respond, she simply sat there looking at Hansen. The man did not bother waiting for an invitation this time around. He slid into the booth across from her. He leaned his back into the seat his hands lacing together on the table. Once again he held an uncomfortable silence with her, but it was different. He seemed to be struggling to choose his next words.

"We got off on a bad start this morning. I imagine you could understand why I was a little terse with you," Hansen finally spoke, his head tilting to one side as he examined her. "It doesn't help that the intimidation factor means everything in my line of work, and it can be a bit of a struggle to turn off on the spot, miss… do you have a name which I can use, or would you prefer officer?"

Vetara sipped her drink and exhaled.

"My name is Vetara Calarian," she introduced herself. "And you are Johannes Hansen."

Her revelation that she had been digging into his records already was the direct hit she needed on the human's ego. Vetara watched with mild satisfaction as the human blinked and slightly recoiled at her use of his actual first name. He glided one of his hands through his hair and sat there silently glowering at her. She was honestly surprised he was keeping a certain measure of control over the words he probably wanted to use. He did not strike her as someone very tolerant of people outside his race.

"Do me a favour and stick to Jack, or Hansen," Hansen requested finally, his voice steady in spite of his annoyance. "I see that you already read into my files. I should be flattered I left such an _impression_ on you, that you just needed to know more..."

Vetara shifted uncomfortably in place at Hansen's observation. Yes, she had invested a great deal of personal attention into the human in a short span of time. She had good reason for it, he had forced himself into her life, so it was only nature she had held a small measure of curiosity about him. Not that she would ever dare to admit it to him.

"It's not often I meet a mercenary concerned about his public image," she brushed off, maintaining a sense of casualness in the topic.

For the first time since they first met, Jack Hansen emitted a small smile, like he was genuinely amused at her remark. Vetara watched as the human shrugged his shoulders as though the gesture had all the answers.

"A respectable public image is important hallmark to First Wave Security services; compensated for with the six figure salary, benefits, hazard pay," he explained to her in a light, almost gentile fashion. "If it makes you feel better, First Wave contactors are carefully vetted for mental health warning signs. No psychopaths permitted employment… sociopaths and narcissists… now that's a whole separate story in itself…"

If he was trying to be humorous, then Vetara wasn't feeling it. His words just hung over them, leaving both of them uncomfortable. Hansen unfolded his hands and laid them flat on the table and as an asari server passed by, he leaned forward to catch her attention. He gestured to Vetara's drink, ordering for her a refill.

"You know, I am glad you followed me, or at least you followed my cue to follow me…" Hansen continued as the asari left to go get Vetara her drink. "You have the makings of a detective. Once you learn to check your corners, you'll be just fine."

Vetara struggled not to scowl.

"And why was it you wanted to see me," She asked, not leaving him a chance to tease her anymore. She already had enough of a blow out about it with her boss; she did not need it from this human.

Thankfully Hansen seemed to get it.

"The Ambassadorial office and C-Sec have come to an arrangement over the killing. First Wave is conducting an investigation into the murders," the contractor addressed the officer, his voice flattening back into one of a professional nature. "C-Sec will be keeping its hands off it. They will mark the attack as a random act of violence publicly and close the case as an isolated act of violence in order to lure whoever got slaver to commit to a suicide mission. First Wave clandestinely conducts the operation. The boss is calling private investigators from Earth."

The turian could only stare at the human as she attempted to process what he was saying. Why would C-Sec permit a private organization to conduct a murder investigation? She remained silent as the asari server set Vetara's freshened whiskey in front of her and asked if she could get Hansen anything. As Hansen shook his head to dismiss her, he used the lull between them to light a cigarette and silently, he began to smoke, his eyes remaining locked on to hers.

"That is highly irregular," she finally spoke, unable to believe her bosses would permit any of this to occur on their watch.

Hansen shrugged his shoulders.

"Not really," Hansen muttered back to her, a mouthful of smoke billowing lightly from his mouth as he casted his pointed stare at her. "The murder victims were human; they don't warrant the full interest of Citadel Security-"

"You are so far from the scope of reality, it's unbelievable," she finally snapped, losing control of her emotions in the face of the obvious racial bias Hansen was suggesting. "Anti-human bias does not exist in the scope of Citadel policing. We are policing millions of beings on this station and doing it to the best of our ability. It's a difficult job made worse when… when newcomers decide to scream oppression at the slightest inconvenience they face."

She watched smoke billow out of his mouth and nose as he silently observed her and took in what she had said. From the smirk that seemed to form on his mouth, he did not buy a word she said. She watched him wearily, twitching slightly as the man leaned forward, his cigarette tapped into the ashtray.

"Whatever you say, darling…. But yes Miss Calarian, I will admit to Citadel Security being… _stretched_ thin as it is. The way I see it, any chance to pawn work off onto others is fine in their opinion," he returned, maintaining his neutral tone. "The thing is First Wave obviously doesn't have jurisdictional authority over the station. So it was suggested that a C-Sec officer is placed as liaison to First Wave; someone who will have the authority of the C-Sec who can make arrests and have access to C-Sec resources."

He paused for a moment, a smile returning to his face as he tapped out his cigarette.

"In fact, the suggestion was mine, and since you and I are already acquainted with one another, I nominated you as the aforementioned C-Sec liaison," he elaborated further, his voice growing amused as he watched Vetara's mouth open slightly as she processed just what he had done. "My boss and your bosses agreed to it…. Now, you can complain to your superiors, if you'd like to – I would understand – but you should save yourself the effort. The Council has gotten involved out of respect to the Novichkov family."

Complaining wasn't exactly what she had in mind, so the human suggesting it seemed like he was back to making his assumptions again. Still, it wasn't a bad idea to try. If the events of today proved anything, she still had a long way to go before she was ready for this sort of responsibility. At twenty-four and three months out of academy, she had no business to be involved in an investigation such as this conducted by aliens working for a third party organization.

Still, while her rational side screamed this logic to her, she could not help but have felt a little… flattered that he had respected her enough to want to work with him. The man clearly didn't trust aliens. So to have him sitting there offering a spot to work with him must have been a personal sacrifice in some strange way.

"You nominated me?" she repeated his words back to him. "Look, Hansen, I'm new to C-Sec; what possible use am I to your investigation?"

Vetara watched as the man shifted in his seat, his arm reaching out to rest against the back of the booth. Half of his mouth revealed his teeth as he maintained his expression of carefully controlled politeness for her benefit.

"Yes, I know you're new. I choose you because I don't want to deal with some veteran set in their ways," he explained his reasoning to her slowly, as though he was guiding her through like a teacher to a student. "I don't want some high minded asari lording moral superiority over me. I don't want some jumpy frog… salarians… whatever they are reciting regulations at me. I don't even want one of those token human hires your bosses made as of late – they tend to be brownnosing assholes; and most of all I don't want to be hassled by some old turian cop, who thinks he knows better than I and frankly I don't have the time or patience to be dragged around at their pace."

Bristling with annoyance at the slight he uttered against her race, Vetara crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Hansen.

"If you have a problem with turians, then I hate to be the one to point out the obvious to you…" she muttered back, thick with her own sarcasm. It was enough to make Hansen arch his brow and

"Yes, but I suppose no one is perfect," he retorted easily. "I can overlook that misfortune because you… you, I see a blank slate. Someone I can work with. I want someone who knows what she's doing, but isn't locked in her ways to a point where it's at my detriment. I think that the two of us will get along just nice in these circumstances… don't you agree?"

She did not agree, and she certainly did not like any of this, but she would not get to say what was on her mind because everything told her that she had no room to complain. As far as she could see, she had no choice in the matter. It was better to maintain some sort of civility with Hansen if only to keep this odd new partnering from blowing up before it began. At least with her not causing trouble, it would perhaps buy her some grace. If this merc played fast and loose, perhaps she would be able to rein him back in if she stayed on his good side this early into the alliance between them.

Slowly Vetara nodded her head, accepting what he had said. Hansen clasped his hands together, apparently very pleased that he had gotten her to sign off on this insanity.

"Well, I said my piece, and I'll let you mull it over. It was nice to meet you officially, Vetara Calarian, and I mean that too," Hansen said as he stood up from his seat. He reached into his jacket and dropped a credit chit down on the table in front of her, adding. "Why don't you have a couple more drinks on me? It'll help to ease the pain of all of this. You'll be hearing from me sooner then you'll probably like."

With that Hansen left, not looking back to her and leaving Vetara filled with more questions than she had answers. Frustrated by this turn of events, she grabbed her drink and downed the last of the contents in one gulp. She supposed he would be back in her life soon enough to paint a clearer picture of the mess she was drafted into.

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 **This got a very strong opening response from positive to sarcastic suggestions. I hope this chapter clears up some of the miswording I had on the previous chapter AN about Hansen edginess in particular and Vetara having to get saved like a damsel in distress or something. The only real downside to these shorter chapters is noticeable particularly in the first couple chapters. New characters are being introduced and 2000-3000 words are not nearly enough to define them in the first encounter. I didn't have time to explain how old she was and how experienced she was on the get go. With this short chapter mode, it takes a little build up and a little patience. I will always go out of my way to build as believable protagonists as possible, and these two will not be any different.**

 **Anyways, I'll be giving the characters some breathing room for development. Unlike Eden, this story is not nearly time sensitive. No looming Reaper threat in 2169. No immediate need for nuclear explosions.**

 **I'm also trying to plot out the period of time between updates. I feel like this was a good amount of time, but I may go faster depending on the content. Like, if I were to do something personal time between them I imagine it would come out faster (as I am a sucker for interpersonal relationship writing…) action and serious plot may take a little longer.**

 **I'm a little iffy on the name, right now. I was going to call it Shadowplay, but it felt a little too obvious. lol.**

 **Thanks for reading, thanks for the warm reception and I'll see you as soon as I can!**


	3. Chapter Three

**I'm really hoping that the alert system will work this time around. Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy this.**

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 **Chapter Three**

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Issuing out a citation to an illegal salarians food vendor, Vetara Calarian returned to the side of her patrol partner, Officer Aleena Ialania, who was trying not to smirk too obviously after watching Vetara keep her cool as the salarians rattled on endlessly about being harassed.

Aleena was a seventy-eight year veteran of C-Sec. That was still a concept hard to fathom for her, but that was asari longevity in action. She was still in her early to middle maiden stage and loved her low level position in Citadel Security with all her heart. According to her, her parents were well-to-do business operators on Thessia and Illium and wanted to rope her into it. This was something she didn't want to do in her youth so she ran off and joined C-Sec and hadn't looked back since.

Vetara did not have a lot of experience with asari. She did grow up on Palaven and while she learned the various strength and weaknesses of the races she would one day encounter, she was never prepared for the social and societal aspects of the interactions between the races.

Fear was a huge motivator in Hierarchy education. She was taught to fear the asari and their biotic abilities, honed over the centuries of their lifespans, she was taught to be weary of their arrogance and long term planning, but she never knew how kind they could be until she first met Aleena, who took her out for dinner on her first day on the force and helped find her an apartment, using her parental taught skills of haggling to get Vetara the best deal possible.

It was a nice that she had Aleena as a friend in the first days. She did wonders in getting Vetara used to living outside of Palaven. It certainly helped overcome the homesickness she felt in her first weeks.

As the two of them continued down their patrol route, Vetara felt the asari nudge her.

" _Don't look now, but we're being followed…"_ she heard the Aleena say in a low whisper.

Vetara nodded her head. She was very well aware of this fact before Aleena apparently was.

"Human, taller then me, suit, green eyes, slight unevenness in walking pace caused by the concealed heavy pistol he has on his persons…" she muttered back at her fellow officer. She paused and lamely added. "A stupid… amused expression on his stupid smug face..."

Still not looking behind her to acknowledge the tail, she did however notice Aleena decided to lose all tact about the whole thing and turned to direct her attention to Jack Hansen, who was roaming about hundred feet behind the pair of them, a cigarette between his fingertips. He had been following the two of them for the better part of half an hour now. At least as far as she knew, it might have been longer. Perhaps only now he was looking to get spotted by her.

Next to her, Vetara heard Aleena emit a small whistle as though she had been impressed.

"You know, you're really good at this covert observation stuff," she returned to Vetara, a small grin on her face as she looked away at the human stalking the pair of them. "Now if only you'd learn to check your corners, you might get off the street."

It took all her effort not to strike her partner, but Vetara found it in her to restrain her annoyance. Honestly, she quite liked street patrol. It was quiet, it wasn't particularly taxing and until yesterday it wasn't physically violent. Exhaling, Vetara wrapped a talon on Aleena's shoulder and together the two of them came to a full stop. She couldn't keep pretending she wasn't being followed any longer. It was time to see just what it was that Hansen wanted.

As Vetara turned around and directly made eye contact with the human, Hansen took it as a cue. Dropping his cigarette -littering in front of to security officers, no less - he pushed by a salarian rather rudely and approached the two of them. He came to a stop in front of the pair of them. Vetara took in his smaller details she hadn't noticed. He was clean shaven now, and with that expression of amusement never vanishing off his face, he causally slipped his fingers into his trouser pockets.

"Hansen, what are you doing here following me around?" she decided to ask him, forgoing any standard salutations.

Hansen never blinked as he looked her over. He could only roll his shoulders back as though that explained everything to her. Vetara ignored the uncomfortable feeling bubbling in the pit of her stomach. Something about this man was off since the moment she first met him.

"I told you that you should expect me sooner than you think," Hansen reminded her.

He paused to look at the curious expression on Aleena's face. He returned back to an expression of stone silence, as though he was not willing to interact with her without minimum an introduction from Vetara. At least that was what she hoped was going on. Judging from her previous encounter with him, he wasn't exactly a fan of asari. It was a peculiar novelty to her considering human male fascination with the race.

"This is Officer Aleena Ialania, she's my patrol partner," Vetara made the introduction, attempting to remain civil in the face of her annoyance. "Aleena this is Jack Hansen, the _mercenary_ … oh.. I apologize, Johannes... J _ack_... I mean, the respectable, totally innocent Private Military Contractor."

Aleena chuckled slightly and offered her hand out to the now very annoyed human.

"It's nice to meet you," she welcomed him.

The hand Aleena had offered remained untouched. Instead Hansen just stood there, unmoved by the introduction and unwilling to interact with her in the slightest.

"Likewise," Hansen finally returned. He turned back to Vetara and without missing a beat he added. "Can you tell her to leave us now?"

The asari blinked, her mouth hanging open slightly at the dismissal. It took a moment longer for Vetara to comprehend what was happening. When she did, she felt a sudden surge of outrage at the human, which if Hansen noticed, he certainly didn't care in the slightest to alter his behaviour.

" _Excuse me?_ " she asked, understandably upset by the dismissal. Hansen remained unmoved and unapologetic.

"I'm sorry... but kindly go," Hansen ordered Aleena, as though he was C-Sec as she was. "Call in for another partner to help keep an eye on traffic violations and arguments breaking the sound laws, make sure the frogs don't start spawning in the street… whatever you do. Just go away. Is that a more definitive elaboration?"

The silence was thick and uncomfortable between the three of them. Aleena and Vetara stared at the newcomer Hansen. Hansen remained locked in place, uncaring as to the mood he had created. It probably didn't help that her birth father had been a salarian.

Fuming, Aleena looked up to Vetara and pushed by Hansen and her, stalking off as she activated her communication set to radio in for a new patrol partner leaving Vetara and Hansen alone finally. Vetara rounded back and felt nothing short of rage for the human was standing there smiling as though he was proud of himself for doing what he had done.

"You didn't have to be like that to her!" she snapped at him, losing all control over the tone of her voice.

Vetara didn't care that civilians were watching the argument between the two of them curiously. She watched, fuming, as Hansen stepped forward and leaned in to close any gap between the two of them.

"We got work to do and my niceties for C-Sec extend only to you. I picked you because I see you doing bigger, better things. You're no patrol officer, and you're embarrassing yourself with every second you pretend you are," he reminded her, his voice steady and much more tolerant than it had been to Aleena. "You're a detective, and when I'm done with you, your bosses will be lining up to promote you. Detective Vetara Calarian, promoted for breaking up a crime syndicate, youngest detective on the force… and I fact checked that as well, you would be by turian standards at least…"

As Hansen pulled himself back, he left Vetara slightly… dazed… flattered even. She did not want to feel that way. It seemed wrong to her to derive praise from a legal criminal. However she could not deny the truth in his words. This was a major career boost in the making.

As Hansen started walking, his arm outstretched and waved her to follow. Hesitating for a moment longer, Vetara followed after him, catching up and maintaining with his relatively long strides.

"Speaking of which," Hansen pressed on. "I was under the impression you should be on Palaven in military service. You're pretty young, I imagine."

Slightly annoyed at him for calling out her age, but she was equally surprised he knew she was young, Vetara inclined her head, but Hansen wasn't looking to notice her acknowledgment.

"Twenty-four, and yes under most circumstances I would be still in the military," she confirmed, a little uncomfortable with telling him this. "I got marked for policing following adolescence testing and several interviews. In the Hierarchy military academy, those who show an aptitude for certain traits are placed in specialized training programs. I was narrowed down to Marksmen and policing. From there I selected the latter."

That caught Hansen's entire attention. He looked over to her as they continued to walk together, brushing by a group of asari's chatting. She supposed she should have expected this interest from a former soldier.

"Why?" he inquired sounding genuinely curious. "I imagine you would get more acclaim as a sniper."

Vetara's mandibles clicked slightly as she flared slightly open in mild embarrassment by the man's attention to a subject she really did not want to address any more than she already had. Why she had said it in the first place was completely unknown to her. Only two other people knew this, her test administrator and her father, whom she consulted the choice with. It was Father who helped her choose by talking her through the vastly different career paths that lain in front of her.

"I probably would," was all Vetara muttered back.

A silence returned between them, one which Vetara forced by tightening up her expression so that it told Hansen not to push the matter any further. Not that boundaries were something Hansen could abide to by the looks of things.

"So why policing?" Hansen broke the silence, still a genuinely curious as he had been before. "…or is that too personal a question?"

Vetara did not reply. Yes, it was a personal topic which she did not want to freely broach with a man she had only met a day ago. Her lack of response was enough to earn a nod of understanding from the human.

"Tell you what. Let's play a little trust building exercise game. I call it 'Two Truths'," Hansen suggested, his idea earning Vetara's turn of her head in his direction.

"The rules of the game are simple," he continued, offering her a small grin. "If there is something I want to know from you that is not related to our work, you will tell me what it is that I want to know, and you will be one hundred percent honest to me about it. In return you get to ask me anything you would like to know about me, and I will be just as honest as I ask you to be, and on top of it, I will have to answer your question first. Likewise, if you want to ask me a personal question, be prepared to offer up a personal answer first in return."

Vetara eyed the man suspiciously. It all seemed too well crafted to be a spontaneous idea, he probably had something like this in mind since it as decided she would work in conjunction with him.

"How do I know you're not attempting to deceive me?" she inquired after a moment of deliberating where she would go from here.

Hansen shrugged.

"Part of the trust exercise," he spoke with a casual inflection. "Do we have a deal?"

Silently, Vetara pondered a multitude of questions. All of them seemed to have an overarching theme which was: _'Why are you such a contemptible asshole?'_ Now, while she thought it was a perfectly good question and one she wanted to know for sure, but it did not seem like the right time to ask it. Besides, the question he wanted answer might have been more mundane compared to that. She might as well start lighter.

"Yesterday, at the bar…" she started, a small trace of humour entering her voice as she eyed the human. "You ordered a drink, and you didn't drink it. You didn't order another drink when you came to my table and bought me drinks. Why was that?"

Hansen remained silent for a moment as he seemed to contemplate his answer. Whatever the case, it had to be the truth.

"I don't drink-" he started, only for her to cut across him with a genuine laugh at his expense.

"Why do you waste credits on one then?" she demanded to know, her mandibles flayed open as she rounded on him, quickening her pace, she stepped out I front of in and turned, walking backwards in front of Hansen so she could get a full view of him as she added. "Is it part of your intimidation factor? Do you think it makes you look sophisticated or… what is that human phrase…Icy?"

To his credit, Hansen took her needling well. His were tightened together but were stretched upwards into a small smile.

"Cool?"

Vetara nodded, yes that was the word. What a ridiculous human phrase for a fashionable act

"Cool," she repeated sardonically continued to step away from his quick pace. "Does having a drink at hands reach make you look cool?"

Vetara watched as the man looked from side to side as though he was being overheard by others. He quickened his pace until he was nearly face to face with her. She could see that his amusement had sort of faded.

"I don't drink because I'm a recovering alcoholic…" he stated matter-of-factly.

Vetara stopped moving and in so doing, Hansen ploughed hard into her, causing the both of them to spill down onto the ground. Stunned by what he had admitted to, Vetara remained unmoving as she stared up Hansen as he recovered himself quickly and stood over her. Silently, he reached out and extended his hand to her for Vetara to take.

She did not take it.

Instead she twisted in place and stood up; her eyes remained locked onto his as she silently stewed in what had so causally admitted to. To his credit, Hansen remained completely causal about it. He even permitted that small grin back onto his face as he took in her expression of shock.

"Oh my…" he said, emitted a low exhale. "I think it just got a little too real for you, didn't it?"

Yes, perhaps it had gotten far too real, far too quickly. Her question was meant to be a light one, perhaps to be used to prod at his ego a little bit. She hadn't expected him to admit to a personal problem so voluntarily. While she never knew any alcoholic, or addict in general personally inside her own race, she doubted very much they would be so forthcoming about their dependency issues as Hansen had been.

"Are you… are you being serious?" she blurted out; she just had to be sure it wasn't a ruse. She did not want to belittle it if it was true, but she didn't want to come off as easily pacified either. There was still a chance it wasn't true. He was a mercenary after all. They were not to be trusted.

There was a flash in his expression. I was present for only for a second, but it was there nonetheless. It seemed to that in the brief window of vulnerability; Hansen was upset by the question she had asked. It was only brief however. As soon as it was on his face, it was gone, and that grin of his was back. She felt as he reached out and gripped her arm hard.

"That's how the game works, Calarian – honesty is a key rule," Hansen reminded her, seemingly unaffected in spite of his moment of vulnerability. "Like I said, if you ask a question, you better be prepared for anything; and that extends beyond our little game as well. We're wandering into a murky world. We may see things we're not ready to see. We may have to do things, we don't want to do... but I'll assure you right now that we'll have to."

Vetara nodded, her head bowed. She tried not to think too much about what was in store for them. Those sorts of things were too unimaginable to dwell on, so when they came up she would do so then. For now, she just wanted to focus on the present and what was present was how… bad she felt having making him reveal his problems to her.

"I…" she started, and then stopped. "I did not mean to delve into your personal affairs so soon, and so deeply. I am sorry, Hansen."

Chuckling lowly, the Human's head tilted slightly as his hand sort of pushed her back and pulled her towards him in a rocking sort of fashion.

"I invited the question," Hansen once again reminded her reassuringly. "Look, I've got three years sobriety to my name. I trust we're not going to have a problem with it. You're not going to get all weird around me, right? And for the record, I'm not some holier-than-thou dick about other people drinking around me; I'm not here to save you from your vices like a good little hypocrite, I'm not going to preach at you because I know exactly what we're doing is going to require some way to cope with it. So if you need a drink - and my money is on that being a distinct probability - we'll stop and get you one no problem for me… okay?"

Vetara exhaled and looked up into his green eyes. As Hansen released his hand on her shoulder; slowly, reluctantly she nodded her head. She didn't drink beyond a social manner, but it was good he left room for her to do so. Silently she accepted what he had said that he was fine with it on face value in spite of her logic demanding her to be more critical of the man and what he had confessed to. It just felt clear to Vetara that Hansen he wasn't lying about a subject like this.

The man was a total… well… a total asshole… but he seemed to be an honest asshole so far.

"So…" she said, finding her voice. "Why order the drink then if you're managing alcoholism?"

The small grin on Hansen's face turned into a wider grin. He shook his head dismissively.

"Well now, that's a second question in itself, and you're now in the red for an answer, aren't you?" he refuted easily. "I think one exchange in this game is enough for today… for both of our benefits I think."

The two of them remained standing still in the shadow of Hansen's confession. Another wave of discomfort washed over Vetara for a new reason. It was her turn to open up, to be as honest to Hansen as he had been to her. His question of her… well… it felt like sort of insignificant compared to admitting a dependency issue to her only a day after they first met. It was worse than insignificant… It felt so incredibly childish.

Still, he asked the question, so he had to accept the answer. It just so happened that today he had to admit far more than she did.

"I chose policing… because… well… because I don't think I could take a life," she confessed, blurting it out as though she was dumping antiseptic on an open wound as quickly as she could. "It's as if… as if I don't think I have it in me to kill another person. … Kind of a silly thing compared to what you said, I know. But that's why I'm not a designated sniper in the military. It's stupid, really."

Vetara had most certainly expected the man to laugh at her. Who could blame him really? Hansen was a soldier at one point after all. Spirits, he still technically was one without the allegiance to a people. He probably had to take life on more than one occasion. Such a concept of a turian with a killing phobia must have seemed like a real turnabout. If her hypothesis on him was correct, he probably was involved in the Relay 314 incident in some way or another to garner a mistrust of aliens.

But Hansen did not laugh. He did not crack a grin or look even slightly amused. He appeared thoughtful, even possibly understanding to her dilemma. His mouth turned down forming a frown, but it was not directed at her in any sort of incriminating way.

"The truth shouldn't be marginalized," he lightly chastised her for her attempt to downplay her own confession. "But this killing thing… is it regardless of species?"

Vetara felt her eyes bulge out at the foolish question.

"Yes! Regardless of species! Spirits… what statement is that?" she managed to sputter out, her voice shaking with anger and annoyance that he would say something like that. "I don't want to kill _anyone_ , and that would make me bad for combat services, so I chose policing because there's at least a shot at me not being placed in that situation. I just… _just_ … I don't… want to kill anyone… Are we clear?"

Hansen held his hands up. The frown vanished off his face. He did not seem unimpressed or judgemental to her. He just looked at her with a strange indefinable expression flowing freely over his soft looking face.

"We're clear…and you know what? I respect the hell out of you for that," he admitted to her plainly, without any sort of irony in his words. "It's kind of… well, it's kind of noble that you feel like that. I honestly hope that your parents are proud of you for feeling that way."

Vetara blinked at his innocent statement he made that had pierced through her very plates. They weren't. They could say whatever they liked to appease her and her shame, but Vetara just knew that they couldn't have been.

"So what are we doing today, Hansen?" Vetara broke their silence. The game was over for the time being, it was time to get back to the business at hand.

Taking her cue to heart, Hansen cleared his throat.

"We are going to the medical coroner's office to get whatever information we can get off the stiff… corpse," Hansen stated, amending his words as Vetara appeared confused by the euphemism. "We'll figure out where he was residing when we get any sort of identification off him and then we'll execute a search on his residence… come along I got my car waiting for us."

As Hansen started walking in the direction of the line of cars parked in the ward parking lot, Vetara followed after him, remaining a step behind him as he took the lead.

"That requires a search warrant," she mumbled to him, deciding to remind him that they had to remain in the bounds of the law if they were going to do this thing.

The very idea of that was enough to make Hansen laugh as though it was the funniest thing he had heard in a while.

"Well now, good thing one of us is in C-Sec, I suppose," he shot back in her direction. He activated his omni-tool and with a beep, a blue and black hover car flashed its headlights, the clicking of the doors unlocking answered as well.

"I've never gotten a search warrant before," she admitted to him.

Hansen opened the sliding doors of the cars and turned back to face her.

"Then it will be good practice for your promotion, _Junior Detective_ ," Hansen reminded her. He took a seat in the driver's side and patted the seat next to him. "Now come along Junior Detective Calarian, we've got an autopsy to bear witness to!"

Vetara closed her eyes and tried not to grumble openly as she took her seat and felt the car engine turn over with a hum. She hoped beyond hope that the title Hansen had bestowed on her would not stick to her. That it would just be a one-off thing

She could not have been more wrong.

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 **Thanks for reading. Be sure to participate. It does wonders.**


	4. Chapter Four

**Finally! (Though I guess it's not a bad update rate)**

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 **Chapter Four**

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Darak Veteorc. That was the name of the deceased collected from DNA samples ran against the database.

A citizen of the Citadel for nearly six years, he was a clerk, working at a used ship parts business in the lower wards. He had a clean record since he came to the Citadel, and not even a whiff of criminality back on Khar'Shan. He minded his own business, paid his taxes and just tried to live his life to the best of his ability in spite of his low position in the Hegemony. His extranet searches on his personal data pad held no sign of political affiliations or warning signs. He was by all accounts a normal, well-adjusted man.

All of this new information gave both Hansen and she an uneasy feeling as the two of them likely had the exact same question running through their mind: What exactly motivated this batarian to reach out and murder a family? How was it that this man came prepared to die, not just to spur of the moment suicide by flinging himself off a balcony or suicide by security, but to drill out a tooth, and place a poison tablet coated in light enamel in its place.

She had one theory she dared not say out loud. That this batarian had been a sleeper agent, working on behalf of the Batarian Hegemony. He had been carefully prepared and groomed to the point where he was willing to kill and die to serve their needs. Yesterday it seemed as though he had been called into service.

So with this information gathered, the evidence complied into her omni-Tool, Vetara begun preparing just how it was she was going to go about asking the local District Attorney to obtain a search warrant on Veteorc. She wasn't entirely certain how the process worked, so she decided she would just walk into the office and present her request. If the Attorney was confused, she could just direct the lawyer to her boss. It was all she could really do.

"Hold up for a second, Calarian," she heard him say behind her. "We need to talk something out."

Vetara turned back and that Hansen had stopped walking. His arms were at his side, his hands in fists as though he at a state of attention. Gone was any trace of his casual nature she was getting used to. He was back in his official professional capacity. All the professionalism was back on full display, and that was surprisingly worrisome. It confirmed to her that he was just as concerned about this development as she had been.

"What is it?" she asked, watching as the man stepped forward.

"This is looking less like a lone wolf or some sort of grievance based vengeance, then I thought it initially might have been. I wanted it to be that, I prayed it was, but it clearly isn't," Hansen spoke as the gap between the two of them was closed. "I know I said we'll do things your way – using professional and legal means to track the culprits down - but that's no longer going to be possible."

Vetara could only stand there and stare at Hansen and what it exactly was that he was implying. He had promised her to act in a legal manner, and now here he stood suggesting to her that such a thing was no longer possible?

"No, I took an oath to uphold the laws of the Citadel. We're getting that warrant, Hansen," she demanded, jabbing the man in his chest. "We're not operating outside the legal boundaries of the law. I'm not throwing my career into jeopardy; I'm not going to become _you_."

Vetara turned away and continued back in the direction of the car. This time Hansen followed her, his tailing of her served to incense her even further. She could not believe that she allowed herself to be entrapped by this. That he would go back on his intentions the moment she was just starting to get used to him.

She really should have expected this, all things considered. This human was as deceitful as her father had warned. She did not believe that they were all like Hansen, but Hansen certainly the vocal minority making human integration into the Citadel membership a difficulty.

"Twenty-five minutes," he called behind her, his voice high as he tried to get her attention.

Not bothering to turn back as she marched away from him. Vetara refused to give the man any more of her direct attention. But it wasn't long before she was not given a choice. Hansen reached out and took her by the shoulder, spinning her around in place. He looked down on her; his expression was one of annoyance at her. Vetara glared back, ignoring the urge to attack him on the spot for his physical interference.

"Twenty-five minutes. That's the amount of time between when Karin and the children managed to evade me and when Darak hit them," Hansen growled down at her. "That is an _incredibly_ short window of opportunity, which means one thing. There were others directing him, others must have surveilled the family. This is well beyond what I hoped it would be: a lone wolf hit, perhaps a couple conspirators with a grudge at most. This sort of operation doesn't come cheap, so someone is financing them, and that someone isn't going to be dumb enough to have someone not monitoring C-Sec actions and channels extensively… perhaps even placing a man inside your ranks to keep tabs on the investigation."

Hansen paused, maintaining his defiance in the face of Vetara's steadily boiling rage and contempt directed towards him. There was, however, a shadow of regret that Vetara could grudgingly detect, like he didn't actually want to do this, but had as much choice in the matter as she did. It was clear he probably didn't want to have this murder case escalate into a full blown assassination conspiracy, but here it was happening regardless.

"This isn't just about me; this is just how it is. This was bound to happen in some form or another, it just so happens we are in a worst case scenario," Hansen pressed on, not noticing her rage, or perhaps ignored it. "When C-Sec closed the case as a random murder, Chief Alia Aveana and my boss became the only other people on the Citadel who know what we're doing. Whoever else involved will likely continue to believe that C-Sec is uninvolved, and First Wave is just another private security organization that wouldn't divert efforts to investigate. When we get discovered by the culprits, we'll be rogue elements working together following our firing from our respective services. Doing this could save my colleagues and your fellow officer's lives."

Vetara could barely breathe as she stared at the human in shock at what he was hinting at, but not addressing directly.

"What is it that you're saying," she breathed back at him. Her claw turning into a fist.

"I'm saying, that your boss has already signed off on whatever we need to do. Carte Blanche, free hand…freedom of action," he said without missing a beat, like it was all fine to him. "I'm saying First Wave isn't sending Private investigators to conduct the investigation. We're officially disavowed from our organizations the moment we enter his home… fired for insubordination, in fact. When what we need to know is uncovered, we'll report back in and get sanctioned-"

Without warning, Vetara reached out and grabbed him, bringing her knee up and slamming it hard into his abdomen. The human was winded by the surprise blow and collapsed, taking her with him. But she didn't care. She stood up and grabbed him by his jacket, dragging him back to his feet and slamming him hard against the side of his car.

Yes, she had a problem with taking a life, but she certainly didn't have a problem harming one. Especially this one who was now pressed against his own car, her talons wrapped around his neck. She watched as the Hansen choked, his eyes bulging as they looked up at her dominance over him.

"You haven't just withheld information, you _lied_ to me," she growled at him, her talons scratching into his neck and already drawing blood from him. "You said we would be doing things by C-Sec standards. Now you're telling me that we're going to be damn vigilantes. How dare you stand there and pretend this isn't what you wanted."

She let go, turning away as the human collapsed and hit his ass on the floor. She heard Hansen behind her, struggling to catch her breath. Rubbing the back of her head, she herself was struggling to retake control of her impulses. She was just so unbelievably angry with this manipulative overgrown bastard ape. She hadn't been this mad in her life. This went well beyond what she was prepared for; and worse then that, her family kept tabs on her. They knew how her career was progressing. How was it going to look to them that she had been fired and she wouldn't be able to tell them what the true reason for it was for exactly!

Her life was now officially messed up for the time being and the only one to blame for it was Jack Hansen. Worse, now she was going to have to rely on him to get through this because she certainly didn't know what to do now.

"If… If it makes you feel better, Undercover would be an accurate term to describe this," she heard Hansen say behind her.

Vetara rounded back at the son of a bitch, still just sitting there looking up at her. There was a quaint human phrase 'Shooting the messenger' that seemed to apply to this situation. She didn't care if the people above her had made the call. It was this man who went out of his way to nominate her for the assignment in the end.

"No, because an undercover agents answer to a handler inside C-Sec and ultimately answer for their actions!" she all but shrieked at him. "I've lost my job – I don't care how you word it or if it's temporary! You have _fucked_ me over by nominating me!"

The human remained silent. He sat there for a moment or two longer before he found it in himself to stand back up. His fingertips slipping into his pockets as he had enough sense left in him (or beaten into him by Vetara) to appear rueful at the situation he had cornered her into with a mixture of guilt and flattery.

"I'm an awful bastard, Calarian. I know that better then you can ever find the words to express it," he admitted to her, his tone subdued. "But, I still need your help. You know the Citadel better then I, you know how to work the C-Sec angles and you know all their policies and moves to keep us one step ahead if things get bad. So yeah, when I nominated you, our bosses agreed. Your boss was going to order you into the assignment whether you liked it or not. I didn't… want to deal with that resentment… I wanted to bring you in without sitting you down and saying you were drafted. I figured you would prefer it this way."

Vetara exhaled unsteadily as she continued to hold her glare at Hansen.

"I would have preferred to get the order from the Chief, at least then I would know that you're not just deceiving me," she returned back, forcing herself to keep herself from a state of rage that was still bubbling inside her. "At least it would be official. I prefer orders to manipulation and flattery."

Hansen rubbed the dark imprints the turian had left in his delicate skin. Vetara ignored the small amount of guilt for doing that to him.

"If I knew how to do it better, I would have," he assured her, still subdued. "But I'm… not very good with people. So what do you say, think we can overlook this and continue on… as partners?"

Vetara crossed her arms over her chest, her narrowed yellow toned eyes still locked onto his green.

"I clearly don't have a choice in the matter, do I?" she snapped back at him.

Hansen shook his head. It was probably the most honest thing he did in his life.

"If it makes you feel better, I'll see to it you're financially compensated for this," he promised her, as though credits was enough to motivate loyalty or respect from her. "You'll get your standard pay C-Sec back pay at the end of this, but I'll provide you with whatever you need in the meantime, and I'll have a bonus lined up for yo-"

"Whatever," Vetara cut across him; she did not care for what he said as she attempted to ignore a resurgence of anger at the thought of him now attempting to buy her loyalty with promises of additional pay. "Will we be in contact with Chief Aveana in any capacity? How do you expect to use C-Sec assets if your C-Sec agent purpose is meant to keep you a step ahead of the law enforcement?"

Feeling like the situation was defused enough to approach her, Hansen stepped forward.

"Through a middle man, my boss to be exact," he said activating his omni-tool to scroll through his contacts. He stopped on a picture of a human who appeared a fair amount older then Hansen and added. "His name is David James Merrick. He was my old CO at the First Contact War before he founded First Wave and brought me on. You're going to let me do all the talking, because you'll never meet a man more hateful of turians then him."

Vetara stared at the picture of the xenophobe named Merrick. He had thin grey hair, blue eyes and several creases in his forehead indicating he was an older man. She already hated him on Hansen's description alone. It was for the best that it would be Hansen who was in charge of communicating with him.

As soon as Vetara nodded, accepting the situation was irreversible for the time being, Hansen extended his hand out to her. They stood there staring at each other awkwardly. She knew this human gesture. He wanted to shake hands with her as though they were sealing a pact together. She might have been mad, but she knew that the situation was beyond either party's control.

Vetara reached out and took it, gripping it harder than the human had expected. She watched in mild amusement as the human winced at the vicelike grip the turian had produced.

"Not quite what I had in mind,' he said as he pulled his hand back and took a step back from her, his hand still outstretched. "Give me your service pistol, Calarian. We can't use weapons that are licenced to us. We have to use clean guns from here on out."

Bowing her head as she tried to come to terms with the insanity that was her new position in life, Vetara exhaled. He was right of course; she supposed he probably had to do a lot of extra judicial killings for the private army he worked for. Hating she was doing this; Vetara reached into her holster and removed her Stiletto VII Pistol and handed it over to Hansen's outstretched hand. Nodding as though he appreciated the cooperation, he gestured to the trunk of the car and walked over that direction, Vetara following behind him.

Opening it up the trunk, he dropped her sidearm into it and pulled his own out, placing it next to hers. He reached in and turned around. His stupid small grin was once again back on his face as he presented to her a Kassa Fabrication M-12 Locust submachine gun.

Vetara stood there stupefied at the amount of firepower the man was presenting her with. He watched in silence as she took the weapon from his hands gingerly. It was so unbelievably light to hold. It felt like a toy, but she had seen it in action and knew exactly the amount of killing power it had.

"I know you don't want to kill, and I know I said I respected that position," Vetara heard Hansen speak softly. "But I didn't say anything about not having to be the one to make you break that habit. If we can avoid that that would be great but…

"I don't want to kill anyone," she repeated her stance. She might have been betraying what she stood for to perform an illegal investigation, but this she was going to hold herself to.

Hansen inclined his head to one side, his neutral expression returned as he seemed to have been judging her for taking this position.

"I know, we'll avoid it if possible," he reassured her, whether it was an empty platitude, she did not know. "It's better that we don't leave a trail of bodies. But… like I said, we have to be ready to do things we don't want to do, right?"

She did not reply to his remark. They were an observation she resented. She instead remained locked eyes on the M-12 in her claws and silently, she retracted the weapon back into safety mode. Blinking, she looked back up to Hansen, who emitted a small cough.

"Another thing," he added, gesturing to the trunk once again. "You can't be seen in C-Sec gear; so I got your measurements from your personal files and picked this up yesterday…"

As annoyed as she was to find out that Hansen had accessed her personal files, Vetara supposed what he said was right. If she was going to be a damn vigilante, she could not exactly run around wearing standard issue Citadel Security armour. As Hansen inclined his head in the direction of the trunk, she took his hint and joined him. As she looked in, she noticed a large box with the logo Haliat Armoury splashed on the top. Hansen opened the box and stepped back to allow Vetara her space.

Vetara did not know exactly what to say as she examined the contents. With shaking Talons, she reached in and pulled the Praetorian medium armour chest piece out of the box and took in its splendour with a reverence she could barely contain. It was a beautiful, intricate piece of armour. Black was the base colour, but it was patterned in red, with neon red sensors running along the side of the piece.

She looked up to him, her expression strained as she struggled to keep her composure.

"How much did this cost you?" she blurted out, the question weighing inappropriately heavily on her mind as she stared at Hansen, unable to believe he went out and did something like this.

Hansen's mouth tightened up on one side, forming a strange little smile. He shrugged his shoulders back as though it had not been a hassle to him.

"Don't worry about it," he remarked casually. "It's an investment in your longevity… and besides I don't have anything else to spend my disposable income on."

Nodding blankly, Vetara closed her mandibles and continued to stare reverently at the chest piece. She knew that this was a bribe. She knew that all of this was yet another means to buy her loyalty. The man was clearly a vain proponent of material possessions; and while she was raised not to be better than that, she could not help but not care… this… this was not something she was about to complain about.

"I liked the colour pattern…" she heard Hansen say behind her. "I thought it complimented your face paint well. You're going to have to play the intimidation game as I do, so I figured you better look the part if you're going to attempt to be a pacifist."

She looked back to him, looking at him curiously. Humans… aliens in general, really, did not take much of an interest in clan markings. Sure enough, there was a striking similarity between the red overlapping pattern and the Clan markings of Calarian. She had to admit Hansen had an eye for detail.

Exhaling, and feeling relatively ashamed for assaulting the human earlier, she set the armour back into the box and turned to him, Her claws wringing together as she bowed her head in slight shame. She watched as Hansen was reaching into his jacket.

"Thank you… Jack…" she murmured, deciding to use his name voluntarily. "But I'm still mad at you."

Lighting up a cigarette, Hansen did not comment on her slip in formality, he instead nodded as though it had been no big deal to him.

"I don't deserve anything less," he said as he took his first drag. As he exhaled, he smirked and added. "Now put it on will you? And you better not get all bashful about it; I won't look if it helps… even though I know you don't have any real reason to be modest, now do you?"

Deciding not to make a big deal about his somewhat offensive statement, Vetara reached out and pushed Jack, making the human stumble forward slightly. With that done, she pulled the box out and opened Hansen's car door and slid into the back seat, her talons unfastening her armour excitedly to replace it with the expensive new personal armour she had been gifted.

Amused by her modesty, Hansen chuckled and turned away, walking off to allow Vetara some measure of privacy. Sighing, Vetara dropped her C-Sec chest plate to one side.

Sure, a turian woman didn't need to be quite as self-conscious as human or an asari, but she wasn't going to be an exhibitionist either for the man who was turning her life upside down. Just because she could be bought by him this one time, it didn't mean she was going to let him into every aspect of her life...

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 **Another chapter down, sort of a transitory chapter.**

 **This story is connected to the rest of the PTSD series. So you're going to see the occasional links between the stories. This chapter has shown it's first link. I'm quite pleased with myself. lol.**

 **Anyways thank you for reading.**


	5. Chapter Five

**Sorry for the delay.**

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 **Chapter Five**

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Sitting in the automated taxi cab, Vetara watched as Hansen fixed on the last piece of his own armour onto his body. Like hers, it was black and overlapped in red as though he was going for uniformity with her. Something she sort of appreciated.

They had left Hansen's car at the embassy and caught a taxi down into Lower Ward 135h. The ward was so far from the presidium it did not even deserve the distinction of a name. It was sort of a sad thing, but Vetara did not place much concern into it. Everyone had their place. There was nothing she or anyone could do about it except for the residents who resided there. They alone determined their place in life.

Ignoring the feeling that she was sounding very much like Father, Vetara reached back into the seat behind her and pulled her new helmet towards her chest, her eyes examining it closely. It was a solid black unlike the rest of her armour. The visor was a T-shaped one.

Silently she did her utmost to ignore the small lump in her stomach she had felt since Hansen had gifted it to her. It was a feeling a guilt that the human had spent so much on her without even a consultation. That he had done it without any sort hesitation – at least that was how it seemed on the surface –. She wondered if he understood the significance of gifting a turian armour. It was just not something a turian did unless under special circumstances; such as military discharge, a graduation… special moments in a turian's life. It was certainly not done on a whim as Hansen had done, and especially not with the sort of extravagance. But, she supposed that was just a human thing… jumping without looking.

In spite of the generosity, Vetara was still determining just what this man was exactly. One thing was for certain, he was manipulative and a liar in spite of the games he was willing to play with her. He would use his own truths (if they were true in the first place) to lure her into a false sense of security. She doubted very much she would play the game again. She had to figure a way out of it. Perhaps she would simply give him the silent treatment. Perhaps she would just return the favour and lie and manipulate him to the best of her own ability.

The stereotype that turians were notoriously bad liars was one of those stereotypes grounded by truth. Turians prided themselves always faithful to the truth (at least the good turians did). In Hansen's case she felt herself inclined to disregard her upbringing. If there was one thing Hansen made her do, it was make her disregard a lot of her upbringing.

Next to her, Hansen cleared his throat. It was his tell that he had something to say. Clearing her thoughts, she turned to look at Hansen who had his own helmet in his hand as well. He remained staring straight ahead at the pre-set destination course. They weren't far out now and it appeared as though the human was getting back into character to face the batarian majority populace ward.

"When we're on the job, we're keeping helmets on. Any chatter between us in on the private encrypted channel I supplied you with," Hansen spoke lowly as he leaned into his seat. "As for aliases, we are called _'One'_."

Next to him, Vetara tilted her head in mild confusion at the choice of name Hansen had selected.

"The numeral _'one'_?" she inquired, attempting to come off as slightly humorous. "What's mine, _'two'_?

Hansen directed his full attention back to her. He wasn't amused by anything she had said. Vetara flattened her mandibles back out. That was fine by her.

" _One,"_ he repeated to her once again. "We are uniform in name if we must. The only thing anyone will know about is our sex and species and that we have only a common name to share, do you understand?"

Vetara nodded and Hansen turned away. It did make sense that they used a joint alias like that. As for how generic it sounded, they did not want to go out of their way to leave any sort uniquity which could be used to trace each of them back to their real aliases. Still, she could not deny is wouldn't sound stupid.

"Second, after today when we're in the field, you should probably wash off the clan markings," Hansen, not looking back to her to look at the flash of displeasure she wore at his suggestion. "I know turians get all pissy about bare faced turians, but it's for the best if the helmet has to come off… or at least alter it somewhat."

Frowning at the suggestion he had made, she did suppose there was quite a bit of merit to it. As the car landed, Vetara reached and ran her talons along the facial markings, smudging the thin red lines into her plates, thickening the markings into nearly as though the red paint was human blood in appearance. At least that was how it appeared through the reflecting glass of her helmet.

She looked to Hansen, who nodded and pulled on his helmet. Vetara followed his lead and did the same and together the pair of them stepped out of the car and into the Ward. The pair of them remained in place as the doors closed behind and found themselves suddenly the center of the passer-by batarian's attention.

Deciding to get going, Hansen made the first move towards the apartment residence of Darak Veteorc. Vetara trailed behind the man, her omni-tool activated as she accessed the C-Sec security system on a whim. She had an uneasy feeling being here with these aliens and with only one man as back up. It would be made infinitely worse if someone called in the authorities in control of this sector to investigate their presence while Hansen and she ransacked Veteorc's apartment.

" _It seems like my C-Sec network security access is still permitted,"_ she murmured over their channel. _"I can lock down all communication channels in the building, so that the residents don't call us in. Technical staff monitoring the system will be watching the network for black outs. Standard Operation Procedure is they'll fix it and send a responding unit to take a look. Response time will be fifteen minutes after the repair is fixed."_

" _Good thinking, but it's not necessary. I would rather we save that for a more pressing time, besides I doubt these batarians will call for C-Sec even if we gun half of them down,"_ Hansen responded back to her. _"Monitor the channel instead; and weapon out, we mean business."_

Deactivating her omni-tool, Vetara withdrew her M-12 and raised it as Hansen had done. She took a closer look at the batarians. Hansen's assessment was more or less the truth by the looks of it. They were all glaring at them. Some of them even appearing to be armed simply by the way they held themselves.

It was clear C-Sec must have meant little down here. The Citadel was large, and C-Sec was stretched simply defending the upper wards let alone these slums. Security must have instead been handled by their people. At least it appeared these armed batarians knew better than to act. It was probably not every day they saw a human and a turian down in their apartment complex. If Vetara and Hansen, or any human and turian were in this district, armoured and armed they must have meant business in the eyes of the batarian gang members.

Ignoring her nervous feeling growing inside of her, Vetara stared straight ahead, thankful for her new armour. Together the pair of them pushed through the courtyard of the housing structure, their helmeted heads turning as they checked the armed and unarmed for any potential threat. Hansen was the first to the door, he opened it and turned to secure Vetara's back as she entered the building first and swept for threat contacts. Finding none, she looked back to Hansen, who joined her and closed the doors behind them.

Proceeding through down the hall they located the front offices of the complex. Several batarians were gathered speaking in their native language. They stopped the moment they realized they were not alone and directed their attention to the turian and human stepping towards their group.

"What do you want, _alien_?" one of them asked. He appeared reactively older than the rest of the group and commanded a certain measure of respect from the others in the way a boss held over his employees.

" _I take it, you are the building manager?"_ Hansen called out, opening his external speakers to speak back to the batarian, his submachine gun brandished at the man menacing fashion. _"We need your access codes, and I'm not making it a request."_

To his credit, the batarian kept his cool. Oh, it was little doubt to Vetara that the batarian was enraged by the intrusion, but he knew better than to say anything with two submachine guns pointing in his direction. Instead of voicing his displeasure he did not speak, but he did reach into his jacket and remove a master access card. Without blinking any of his eyes he held it out to the pair of them.

Vetara stepped forward with Hansen covering her. She snatched it out of his hand and together they left, Hansen walking backwards for a while, his weapon lingering in the batarian's direction for a little while longer until they turned the corner and were both clear of his line of sight. They climbed a long, multi-levelled staircase, their weapons both still at their shoulder as they inspected and cleared a family of batarians who gasped in shock and pressed their backs against the wall, their hands raised to show they were no threat.

Satisfied the family wasn't going to make moves – especially with children in their family unit – Vetara and Hansen carried on, making up to the fourth floor which had been listed as Veteorc's primary residence. Sweeping the hallways, the two of them came to a full stop in front of Room 15432. The room was made obvious by the C-Sec police line that had been set up in front of the door to persuade entry.

Hansen exchanged a knowing look to Vetara and stepped back to give her some space. Lowering her weapon, Vetara activated her omni-tool and stepped forward to disable the line. The electronic ticker deactivated and Hansen stepped forward, running the apartment master access code over the electronic reader. The door opened and the two of them stepped into the dark apartment. The door sliding shut behind them.

Hansen turned the lights on and the pair of them took a look around the apartment. The home had been ransacked by C-Sec undoubtedly. By the door was a blanket, which Hansen pulled off to reveal several evidence boxes were at the door as though it had been abandoned. Likely on the order of Chief Aveana to help the two investigators to get a head start.

Hansen holstered his weapon and turned to face Vetara, who followed his lead.

" _I'm going to check these boxes his computer terminal for any sort of correspondence,"_ he spoke as he waved his hand to the desk and terminal off in the far corner of the musky apartment. _"Check the place for any physical evidence your friends may have overlooked."_

Vetara nodded and the two of them broke apart to conduct their separate investigations of the home. Quietly she activated her standard issue bio-scanner tool on her omni-tool and swept the area, looking at the many finger prints and biological residue left behind in Veteorc's wake. As she waved it over the bed, she got a trace of a second person had been in the bed. A second male, batarian as well it seemed.

She took a mental note of it and carried on, her eyes wandering the room as she inspected everything that surrounded her suspiciously. Something about this place felt off to her. It wasn't anything she could see, but she could hear it. Like sort of a humming, a high pitched frequency of some sort being amplified into her helmet's audio receiver sensors.

" _I got something,"_ she faintly heard Hansen say behind her as she found herself lock eyed on a painting of what appeared to be a vista from Khar'Shan. _"Looks like a post mortem cash transaction. Don't you just hate it when you die and your credits get transferred to someone else for a purchase?"_

Vetara did not reply to him or his attempt to be amusing. She instead carefully climbed up onto the dresser which stood in front of the painting and she reached out, pulling the canvas off the wall gingerly. Silently, she stared at what was behind it and stepped back off the dresser, the canvas dropping to one side.

" _I got something, as well,_ " she replied to Hansen. _"Take a look."_

Hansen looked up from terminal and directed his attention entirely to the sensor device that the picture had covered. It appeared as though somebody was in the process of monitoring this place. She did not watch as Hansen stepped forward and stood next to her in front of the device that was scanning the pair of them.

" _So…"_ Hansen spoke over their channel. _"They know we're looking for them…Good."_

 _Good?_ Vetara looked in Hansen's direction. How was it good that they had been spotted so soon by whomever it was monitoring this apartment? She did not get an answer right away as Hansen stepped up onto the balcony as she had, and bashed the device hard with his fist. He pulled the broken device off the wall and tossed it down to Vetara, who caught it.

" _Come on, we got what we need,"_ he spoke as he stepped off the dresser and walked towards the door, Vetara lock step behind him. _"As I was saying, the best part about this is that they'll likely come looking for us now. Nothing will quite kick-start our search like having direct witnesses, if we capture one of them."_

As she dragged the several boxes of evidence C-Sec left behind for them, Vetara did not want to think what capturing a live suspect would lead to. Would they have to torture him? What about after they were done with the conspirator? They couldn't very well just hand him over to C-Sec if C-Sec had been infiltrated as Hansen was alluding to.

But she was dealing in hypotheticals once again. She had to remain focused on what was in front of her and what came next. As Hansen withdrew his weapon to cover her with, Vetara reactivated the C-Sec ticker and the two of them headed back in the direction of the stairs, both of them likely deep in thought about just it was who was monitoring the room. Who was it that knew now that the pair of them was looking for them?

" _Where are we going now?"_ she asked out loud as she stepped down the first stairs, Hansen several steps in front of her.

" _Now, we have an appointment with Thanna Ratali to attend,"_ Hansen replied right away without pause. " _An asari matron, I think you'll like her."_

 _An asari matron_? She didn't do a lot of interacting with asari in the middle stage of their lives. Still, she found herself rather curious as to why Hansen had an appointment for them to keep with her when he was clearly no fan of the asari.

" _And just who is she?"_ she had to know as she quickened her pace in spite of her vision being slightly diminished by the several crates she clutched onto. _"Is she an information broker? An arms dealer? A third party evidence investigator?"_

Hansen only shook his head.

" _Not quite that serious a meeting, she's real estate agent,"_ Hansen addressed her question, his tone amused over their communication channel. _"We can't return to our homes for the time being, not right now at least. So I figured we need a safe house to stay in. Somewhere quiet and out of the way to hide out in while we're doing this."_

From behind her visor, Vetara blinked as she absorbed what Hansen said. Sure, she supposed this was going to be an eventual inevitability, but she had hoped it wouldn't. That hope was officially discarded the moment she had uncovered the tracking device monitoring the apartment, so now here they were, officially living together for the duration of the assignment. She did not know how any of this could have been worse.

Thankfully for her, that was already covered, because Hansen just knew how to do just that. Make things worse without even being asked to do it. Vetara supposed she was somewhat impressed by his proactive approach to disappointment. That consistency to disappointment took a genuine dedication years in the making.

" _I hope you're a good actress. Idonia ward is basically a suburb, and I may have left her with the impression that we're engaged to be married… bonded… whatever turians call it,"_ Hansen continued, without missing a beat, and without acting like there was nothing wrong with what he had said. _"If we pull it off right, we might even talk her into a discount… I imagine nothing will get an asari matron's heart racing quite like a forbidden romance when she sees you..."_

Ignoring the wave of nausea washing over her at the statement the human made, Vetara bowed her head and clamped her mouth shut. She had nothing nice to say about the situation at all. But… for the sake of the assignment, she supposed she would just have to go ahead and play off of Hansen's ruse for the time being.

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 **Next chapter will be probably a great deal more fun to write. Longer as well. Thanks for reading.**


	6. Chapter Six

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 **Chapter Six**

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As the sky car made its final descent into the Idonia Ward, Vetara could not help but be captivated by the district's extensive park stretching through the heart of the district. She glanced to Hansen and found him slicking back his hair, his attention utterly devoted to the mirror in a display of overwhelming vanity.

Hansen's logic in choice of residence was strangely sound in theory. The first thing that came to her mind when she heard the expression _'Safe House'_ was some sort of run-down apartment in a deep dank ward. If she was hunting for the two of them, she really would not have expected to find them in such an extravagant part of the Citadel. It wasn't the Presidium, but it was pretty much the next best thing. The neighbourhood was even better than the one she lived in when she was still working routine C-Sec.

When she questioned him how it as he could afford to set them up here. He shrugged it off as saying he would be compensated by his boss when the assignment was complete, so she decided not to argue it any further. As much as she might have distrusted him, she had to accept it.

For now she had a far greater concern on hand, and it was the insane cover story that Hansen had had concocted for the two of them to use. He wasn't kidding when he said it was essentially a suburb. She did a quick check on the demographics and found it was full of young families, a real mixing of turian and asari communities into one. There was a small but steadily rising human population, but comparatively small. She could only imagine the sort of stir that Hansen and she would be creating by being there together; and she just knew that these sorts of communities meant that there would be extensive social interaction. It would be suspicious if they weren't involved.

So with that in mind, the pair of them spent the car ride over going over their cover story. They were, to the outside world, Aleksander and Cadara Andresen. They had met during a business trip that brought them to Illium and hit it off. Their respective families naturally disapproved, which brought them here to the Citadel to start a new life together.

As annoying as it was to now have yet another name to go by it was a simple backstory to remember. A little plain, but not it was not without Hansen attempting to hijack the story by saying he fought her father and brothers for her hand or some sort of ridiculous thing along those lines. But in the end he caved and agreed to keep it simple. Besides, it made sense by turian sensibilities. If there was a large majority of turians she would inevitably have to interact with, then it was better the story didn't involve her psychotic ape husband attacking her family and stealing her away before she even finished her military training.

Placing her helmet into the duffle bag Hansen brought for them to store their more illicit gear and evidence, she glanced down at her armour. She decided not to get changed out of it. She sort of thought it would help the story - him buying her a new set of armour - If it came up and it inevitably would when the turians asked, it would probably knock him of his guard when he learned the significance. It might even be amusing. If it knocked him down a peg or two, it might even make up for these past few lousy days.

The car came to a stop. Fitting his jacket over his white long shirt, Hansen glanced at her with a mild expression of amusement. He turned back and dug into his bag and pulled a small box out.

Vetara watched as he opened it and she found herself looking at two gold rings. One of which appeared to be wrapped in a chain. Exhaling as he looked at the box in his hand, he reached and took the chainless one, fitting it onto to finger that was second furthest away from the thumb… whatever it was called.

She knew what this was, or had some sort of vague idea. Humans, much like asari exchanged bond gifts - pointless, but expensive trinkets to mark one another as their mates. It was a practice she didn't place a lot of value in, but she held back speaking her mind as a much more poignant question festered into her thoughts.

"I never thought I'd be wearing _this_ again…" he muttered to himself as he pulled the chained one out and extended it to her, confirming her theory as to why her had them in the first place. "I didn't have time to get this refitted, so I put a chain on it… figured we better make sure we looked the part properly."

Looking at the ring necklace curiously, she reached out and took the necklace gingerly, holding it in her palm as she inspected the piece of diamond that was modestly embedded in the gold band. She looked up to Hansen, whose ring-less right hand covered the ring as though he were embarrassed by it. He did not give the impression he was embarrassed by her – odd considering his blatant disrespect for species outside of his own – but rather he was embarrassed by his past.

"You were married?" she decided to speak out loud. She did all that she could to ignore the small thrill she got at the sight of Hansen appearing uncomfortable by such a simple question. As much as she had enjoyed that, she could not help but feel a little guilty… even ashamed she had made him uncomfortable. What if he wife had died or something? Then she would have deserved all his scorn.

"We don't have time to talk about that one time I married the Anti-Christ," Hansen found his voice as he grabbed their duffle bags. "Come on, Mrs. Andresen, looks like we got company waiting for us."

Never before was she glad to hear about a divorce. Glancing out the window, Vetara spotted the asari approaching the car, a charismatic smile resting on her face. She nodded and wrapped the loose silver chain around her neck and opened the side door, stepping out of the vehicle as Hansen did. She remained in place as she watched Hansen sling the bags over his frame and step lightly over to the approaching Matron, a wide stupid sort of smile on his face for her.

"Thanna Ratali, it's a pleasure to finally meet you," Hansen addressed the asari brightly. "We're sorry we couldn't drop by your offices, but everything has been a real hassle these past few days and not looking to drag this out on you. Registering our citadel citizenship has been an honest to goodness nightmare."

Thanna Ratali offered a bright, understanding smile as she extended her hand out, which Hansen… Aleksander immediately took into his own hand.

"That is not a problem. Still it's so nice to meet you in person, Mr. Andresen," the asari greeted him. She looked to Vetara and blinked as though she needed a moment to process it. It was an understandable reaction to the sight of the human's peculiar choice in mates.

"This is my…. Well, Mrs. Andresen…" Hansen stumbled over his orders as he let go of Thanna's hand and stepped back to join Vetara's side. "We decided we couldn't wait much longer and made it official… what? Twelve… thirteen hours ago?"

The question and Hansen's eyes were focused on hers as was the asari. Vetara ignored the urge to tighten up or to sap and slap him hard in the mouth as she felt Hansen reach out and wrap around her waist as though they were an intimate couple. Remaining silent, Vetara could only nod curtly. Whatever Hansen said was how it had to be.

Whatever the case, Hansen's assessment of the matron asari emotional oversensitivity was spot on. She seemed to have almost swooned at the sight of Vetara and Hansen looking at one another.

"In this sort of tense atmosphere between your respective people, I am so pleased to find that the two of you found enough love and bravery to commit to this union," she spoke to the pair of them brightly.

Next to her, Hansen emitted a small laugh as he squeezed Vetara tighter; making the turian woman tighten up and nearly yelp at the surprising grip he could produce in spite of how soft he appeared.

"What can I say? The moment we locked eyes… everything just sort of clicked," he replied, looking to Vetara and really getting into the act. "It didn't go over well with our families, but what matters is how we feel about it… If they want to come around to accepting it, fine, but they're not in charge of our feelings. Am I right, love?"

Vetara looked at Hansen, who looked at her in a way that almost made her believe it was genuine. Completely embarrassed by all of this, all she could do was nod her head. It took all her acting ability to allow a faint smile to spread over her own mouth as she shared what she hoped to appear to be a couple's look.

"Oh, isn't that just so romantic?" the asari nearly swooned, her words had been clearly directed to Vetara in order to break the woman from her silence.

Vetara, on the other hand remained locked in her silence and simply held her expression on the asari, whose smile slightly faltered at the lack of affirmation. It ended up taking Hansen bouncing the side of his hip against her, startling her, to get Vetara to come up with a response. Any sort of response.

"Yes… very…" was all the younger woman managed to say.

The answer did not seem to please the asari all too much. Next to her, Hansen chuckled and leaned his head in, pressing his lips to the side of her plates. The affectionate nip he gave her made Vetara nearly leap and slap the human right there on the spot. Fake marriage be damned, that was completely uncalled for! What if… what it caused an allergic reaction… Damn him, and damn his cover story.

"You know turians," Hansen dismissed the expression of concern which the asari wore with a confident smile for Thanna. "They can't be _too_ publicly ecstatic… It might make them look weak."

The remark was enough to placate the asari. Thanna broke down into a small giggle at the expense of turian stoicism; so too did Hansen whom seemed rather pleased by his stupid little quip at the expense of her. Bristling, she forced a small smile on her face, her teeth slightly bared at Hansen. It was enough of a sign for Hansen to stop his laughter.

Following Hansen and Thanna as they casually stepped towards the condominium, and doing her utmost to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of his arm around her, she froze as she noticed several turians watching the two of them closely. A male and a female, they appeared to have been a couple. As she locked herself in place she brought Hansen to a pause as well. He glanced to the pair as she had, but did not seem to make anything of it.

Vetara was quite the opposite. She did not know why she felt this sudden surge of… well, shame. She wasn't seeing the human, but she supposed that the implication coupled with having to play the role of a wife to him was enough put her over the edge. She did not like the idea of having fellow turians judging her for this. Assuming that she was some sort of race traitor for appearing to be love with the human. It was… embarrassing to say the least. Certainly something she would struggle to reconcile with over the course of this alias they were hiding behind.

The asari looked at what the 'couple' were looking at, and offered a faint smile, her hand waving to the pair of them as though she already well acquainted with them. Taking it as an invitation, the turian woman latched her arm on her husband's and pulled him over to join the three of them.

"Hello Gavus, Matena!" Thanna greeted the pair of them loudly before turning back and in a lowered tone, adding. "These are some of your neighbours. Captain Gavus Hatari – he is a liaison to the Hierarchy military and his wife Matena… I think she's a diplomat on behalf of the Volus… such a nice pair. Several school aged children, one of which is back on Palaven training if I recall correctly."

Hansen released his grip on Vetara, but he leaned in close to her, his eyes directed at the approaching military officer and his wife. He seemed as though to notice the display of embarrassment she had. It was almost as though he was relishing in it. At the very least he had found it to be mildly amusing.

"Why don't you go and greet them, _dear_ ," he spoke loud enough for the asari to overhear him. "I'll sign the papers and extract you as soon as possible… we have a bed room to christen, right?"

She had no idea what he was referring about, but she had a hypothesis or two about his implications. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. Playing the part, she patted his chest, her talon digging hard into his side to cause him some sort of pain. As he winced and let go of her, she stepped away from Hansen and watched the man offer her a wink and he left with the asari, leaving Vetara alone with the encroaching couple.

Gathering her wits to the best of her ability, Vetara rounded back to face them.

Captain and Diplomat Hatari, am I correct?" she greeted the two of them as warmly as she could produce in light of everything happening. "My name is Cadara Andresen. My… husband, Aleksander... is with the asari."

Vetara extended her hand out in the direction of the human and the asari in the process of signing the lease agreement. She smiled confidently as she carefully scanned the reaction of the two of them. Naturally the diplomat was by far the more accommodating to the strange situation then the officer was. While she was clearly going to be subject to private ridicule from the Captain, at least she could understand it. The wounds of the Relay 314 incident still ran deep. To have to be neighbours to a human – a human, of whom they believed was married to a turian no less – must have been a difficult situation to handle gracefully.

Matena Hatari glanced to her husband, apparently disproving of his position being worn so openly in front of the object of his scorn before she turned back to Vetara. For the briefest of moments Vetara could sort of understand why humans… why Hansen wasn't particularly keen on turians, or any other alien for the matter.

"We didn't want to take up too much of your time. We only wanted to welcome you to this neighbourhood," Matena addressed her softly. "We had been told a new couple would be taking up residence next to us, but we weren't expecting it to be so… well, _unique_."

Ignoring the most peculiar twitch running down her back as the diplomat euphemised her disbelief in the fake union; Vetara inclined her head to one side in acknowledgement of that the pairing between herself and her fake husband must have come off as worrisome for them. Perhaps they feared that it might influence their children or other children in the neighbourhood that this sort of species mixing was wrong.

"Well, I assure you we will keep the volume levels to a minimum, if that is a concern to you," Vetara assured her new neighbours. "As you can probably imagine, we are of differing opinions in just about everything there is. But I suppose that is what drew me to him and me to him. There's a fire in him that…is…incredibly attractive to me."

She didn't like saying that, she did not want to be in this situation, but if she had to be, then she would have to start playing the role. Being in some form of bliss raised far less questions then if Hansen and Vetara were cold and impersonal to one another. Silently, Vetara decided she was not very suited to this sort of undercover work. There were just far too many lies and falsehood for her liking.

Glancing to Hansen, who was laughing with the asari, she exhaled. She supposed that he was far less troubled by all of this; deception being one of the cornerstones of his life and all.

"Yes, I suppose that how you would feel for each other is what matters the most," Vetara heard Matena speak, redirecting the younger turian's attention to her, softly she added. "And may I say that I find your armour quite beautiful. Was it a gift from your clan?"

Vetara watched as the turian reached out, her talons touching against the armour she wore. It was a violation of Vetara's personal space.

"Of sorts…" Vetara quietly returned, ignoring the Captain staring at her, waiting for an answer as though he was her father. "It was a wedding gift from him… _Aleksander_. It was a very… sweet gesture, which I don't think he quite grasped the significance."

Matena emitted a small laugh, apparently understanding the alien ignorance to their culture. Vetara did as well, if only to give the impression it was amusing, when she still found herself sort of dazed by it. The only one who remained silent was the cross armed Captain Gavus. Still standing there at a sort of state of attention, and still staring at her like she had done something wrong.

"I don't intend to be rude, but who are your birth clan? Your markings are… peculiar to say the least…" the Captain finally broke his silence.

The question was enough to stun the young woman and let slip her family. She clamped her mouth close as her mind raced for an answer to give him. It did not take long to remember just who she was faking a marriage with and with that she spun her deception.

"As you can imagine, my birth clan has disowned me for falling for Aleksander," Vetara quietly answered the man's question, her voice low and solemn. "These markings represent Clan Andresen. A new clan means a new pattern."

Her words brought about an awkward silence between the three of them. It was exactly what Vetara wanted to achieve. The last thing that she wanted was an overtly complicated back story she had to write down and memorize. It was better instead to keep it simple by making it as pathetic and as realistic as possible. If she had done this in real life, there was little doubt in her mind that Vetara's family would have disowned her – and with good reason – for doing something this shameful.

As Vetara made her expression come off as slightly morose, she looked away and found Hansen… Jack… Aleksander… whatever the right name to refer to him, was approaching the gathering of turians. His expression was a strange display of openness, almost warm even as he presented himself to his new turian neighbours. She had to hand it to him. For a xenophobe, Hansen was certainly a good actor.

"Mr. Andresen, You found such a lovely mate to share your life with," Matena complimented Vetara, who's head bowed slightly at the words. "She's so very… demure… shy even."

Matena's compliment earned a deep laugh which erupted from the human. Hansen reached out and once again pulled Vetara next to him his arm wrapped firm around her waist once again. He made it a point to ignore the Captain narrowing his eyes at the human.

" _Shy_?" Hansen repeated Matena's observation, his tone incredulous as he checked Vetara over appraisingly. "My Cadara is considered shy?… That's probably the first time I could ever consider her to be shy… Remember that time you and I decided to-"

Vetara silenced Hansen by stamping on his foot with all her might. It had to have been made worse by the fact she was still in her full armour.

"We have to go and get unpacked, don't we _dear_? Least I end up eviscerating you over a story you said you wouldn't _share_ ," Vetara cut Hansen with a sweet tone as she took a certain measure of glee at the sight of him in pain. She turned to the surprised Gavus and Matena and added. "Captain, Matena, it was a pleasure to meet you."

Their new neighbours seemed to understand, or at least Matena had. She bowed her in apparent agreement with Vetara's sentiment.

"Of course…Cadara… Mr. Andresen," she said. "I look forward to see you both in the near future."

Vetara nodded and with a small smile, she turned Hansen around and slowly led him away from the pair, fuming that he had actually embarrassed her in front of the other turians with sexual based teasing. She could handle his banter for the most but, but the thought of being defiled by him -even in a joking manner - was on a whole different level of wrong and humiliating.

"You know, I don't think they like me," Hansen mused out loud. His voice was thick with sarcasm as he glanced back at the pair and grinned, his hand waving to them.

" _I can't exactly blame them, it's a real mystery, isn't it?"_ she hissed back at him as he straightened and started walking somewhat more normally now that the pain subsided.

The two of them lapsed into silence as they stepped by Thanna. Vetara opened her mandibles slightly to smile at the asari. It reverted back to a serious expression the moment Thanna waved and turned back to finish her call back to her office. They quietly entered the building and stepped into the elevator, ignoring the several turians and asari who were watching them curiously.

The doors closed and the two of them broke apart. Vetara moved several steps away from Hansen as he waved his hand over the panel to their floor. He dropped his duffle bag and opened it, his hand reaching in and withdrawing a pair of human Predator series heavy pistols. He tossed one to her, which she caught and strapped it to her thigh magnetic strip. Even in a quiet situation like this, neither of them wanted to be unarmed for any extended period of time. Not when whoever they were hunting now knew that they were being looked for.

The elevator came to a stop and Hansen grabbed his bag. Together they stepped out. Vetara paused and found that the elevator had led to only a single door. She looked to Hansen disbelievingly. They were living in a luxury apartment. The sort of thing she never expected to be in…certainly not on a C-Sec salary.

Hansen stepped forward and opened the door. He stepped back and gestured for Vetara to enter first. Whether it was out of respect, or so that she was the first one in to make sure a bomb wasn't waiting for the two of them, she could not be sure for certain. Whatever the case, Vetara obliged and stepped past her partner and took in her new residence in a state of stunned silence.

"So what do you think?" Hansen inquired as he slumped down onto the couch and kicked off his footwear. "It's not very furnished, but I imagine we'll have to get that done sooner rather than alter judging by the social behaviours of this ward. We'll go for tasteful and restrained… unless you want to go out and we can get pictures of us as a lovey dovey couple…"

Scowling at Hansen, Vetara decided she would not even dignify that with a response for the time being, least they started a blow blown argument. It wouldn't look good if they lost their lease two minutes of taking up in their new residence.

Silently, the turian took in her new surroundings with sort of a mixture of wonder and awe. Yes, it was very minimally decorated, but it seemed that that was the point. It would be sufficient place to stay, if a little cold and impersonal. Hanson was right that it would need a personal touch, if only to keep up the appearance for the interactions with their new neighbours, which was a case of inevitability.

"Even empty as it is, I think it looks nicer then my home," she instead observed as she stepped past the sofa to inspect out the fireplace out of a genuine curiosity at its presence in her new home. It was a gas powered by the looks of it. It made sense it would be that. She doubted there would be many places to obtain wood for any other design.

She paused her inspection and turned back to face Hansen who was rummaging through the duffle bag to extract the boxes of evidence which he laid down on the table in front of the sofa.

"Hansen…" she started, attempting to not fumble over her question. "...how is the bedroom situation?"

Laying out the broken sensor they collected from Darak's apartment, Hansen looked up and inspected her, as though he was getting read on her composure in the face of the implied query Vetara had made.

"I doubt you'll like the answers I have," he spoke mildly. "Good news is it's a decent sized bed as it is, and we can always upgrade to something a little bigger. Bad news is there's no spare bedroom, worse news is we're going to have to be social, so we're going to have to be the newlywed couple more then we both care to be… and just plain atrocious news is that I have no intention on sleeping on the couch."

Hansen stood up and allowing Vetara to simmer in his news for a few moments. He approached her as she struggled to find some sort of way to mitigate this turn of events. As he stopped in front of her, Vetara tilted her head slightly up to look him in the eye.

"You don't want to be a gentleman about this?" she asked, remembering that humans were sort of still big on gender based chivalry. It was her last refuge.

Her worse fears came true as Hansen shook his head. He appea4red almost amused by her attempt to guilt him.

"No, Vetara. I really don't have to be," he replied with absolute zero sympathy in his words. "So either you're couch surfing, or you'll be sharing the bed with me... so what's it going to be?"

 **…**

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 ***cue porno music***

 **Thanks for reading, I'll see you all as soon as possible.**


	7. Chapter Seven

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 **Chapter Seven**

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In the end Vetara decided to share the bed with him.

She didn't like it, but the thought spending the duration of the cohabitation involving her sleeping on a couch was by far a worse fate. So as night fell over the Citadel, Vetara spent every uncomfortable minute she had left attempting not to freak out at the prospect that she would be sharing her lodgings in close proximity with the alien.

Now, under other circumstances, it would probably not have phased her. She might not have been a very good turian when it came to suppressing ones morality to do what was necessary when it was called for, but she was still a turian who was taught to facilitate cooperation even down to this level. So while he meandered in the bathroom doing… whatever it was humans did before bed, she prepared herself and the bed to accommodate the two of them. Her preparation being a blanket and throw pillow barrier between them so that there was a clear boundary between them, which she hoped he would respect.

Thankfully, Hansen did not go out of his way to make an awkward situation worse. He came to bed later then she did. The only thing that had made her uncomfortable was how causal he was about stripping off his shirt in front of her. She did what she could to distract herself, but it didn't work. She couldn't help but take in the oddity that was a male with nipples. It took all her efforts not to ask why that was so. He would probably have foregone his tact and say something that made them both uncomfortable.

Still, in spite of this venerable display of human inexplicability all the way down to the biological level, Vetara had to… sort of admit she did not mind what she had saw under in his brief exposure before climbing into bed, There was a certain amount of balance between delicateness and strength to his exposure.

As for the barrier, well it failed. As it turned out, Hansen was a man who moved around in his sleep. Vetara woke up in the middle of the night to find Hansen's arm had flailed out, wrapping around her like she was some sort of body pillow. He had twisted right around and was fast asleep, his face buried in the pillow. Deciding the last thing she wanted to do was wake him up and have an uncomfortable conversation about why his arm was draped over her, Vetara instead get back to a light sleep and hoped he would move again before he woke up.

She woke up once again before the Citadel artificial sunrise occurred. Thankfully for her, Hansen was still asleep and his arm was withdrawn off her frame. With her now newly liberated, she carefully climbed out of bed, got changed into her jump suit and decided to go out for an early morning run.

It would be her new routine. If she was to present herself with a cover, she had to get outside and do things around the community to present herself as one of them. It would also be a good opportunity for her to get a few hours away from Hansen. She doubted very much that he would run for fun, although he did present himself as being in shape, perhaps he was into cardio.

For the time being she would just keep it to herself that she did this. Perhaps when he started to behave and they started to tolerate each other a little more, she would invite her _husband_ to join her. The whole thing was still absurd to her. He had known the human for just about three days now, and since then she had been fired for all intents and purposes, tracking an assassin conspiracy and now this.

It would not be long before her family got wind of this firing. Father had connections through the entirety of C-Sec. He would have one of her elder siblings to look into the matter. In all likelihood it would probably be Katani – eldest of his daughters – although she would not be surprised if he took up the matter personally… her being the youngest child and all. All this was yet another thing she would have to deal with in the near future.

As Vetara slowed down her pace as she returned to her condominium complex, she noticed several of the residence was gathered outside, chatting away before they went to work, she reckoned. The group was composed of Turians, a few asari and a token human woman, whose eyes were unabashedly looking right into hers. They were all gathered around the diplomat Matena Hatari and all of them fell silent as they noticed her approach.

Considering that Matena was the openly personal she had interacted with; it did not take much of an effort to guess what they were discussing.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Hansen's voice cackle out 'be social!' to her. Sighing, she pulled the ear buds of her audio device out of her auditory cartilage and stepped forward to the front of the building, to the group of women and asari waiting for her apparently.

"Hello, Cadara," Matena was the first one to greet her naturally. "How was your run?"

As she came to a stop in front of the gathering, Vetara bowed her head slightly. She straightened up and shifted in place. With one talon gripping her hip as she took a careful look around at all the faces were staring at her as though she was some sort of novelty to be gawked at. She would ignore the urge to say something. It was, after all, their first interaction.

"It was fine, Matena. I find running a nice way to wake up to," she informed the older woman with all sincerity.

"I would have imagined that husband of yours would be enough for that," spoke one of the turians.

The comment wasn't as malicious as Vetara first thought it might have been. It seemed more innuendo than anything. Still, the comment from the turian was more than enough to emit a collection of laughter which did not extend to Vetara, or to Matena, who was attempting to navigate the politics of the condominium complex as smoothly as she could, and oddly enough the lone human in the group remained silent as the grave. She had a small smile on her mouth which did not meet her eyes.

"Under most circumstances you would be right," Vetara replied softly, deciding to play up the assumption Matena had held about her shyness. "But… but I broke him last night; so I got finally got to run in peace."

She wasn't sure where exactly that had come from. It seemed as though Hansen's examples of taking refuge in audacity were stating to wear off on her. Whatever it had been, it was suggestive enough to earn a gasp and more than a couple a laughs from group as a whole. All of them except for the human; she remained lock mouthed and smiling. Staring at Vetara as though she saw her for the fraud she was.

Glancing pointedly at the turian whom had made the initial remark, Matena turned back to Vetara. She stepped forward, and wrapped her arm around her and dragged her into the group properly. It was the last thing Vetara wanted to do, but she knew better then to fight. That seemed to be all was doing lately: denying her instinct and doing the exact opposite on the whims of others.

"I would like to meet a few more of your neighbours," Matena spoke as she first gestured to the turian woman who had spoken. "The smart mouth is Savata Venuari, This is Otavi Aleese, and her partner Ahsara."

As Vetara nodded to Savata, she turned to direct her attention to the two asari, who apparently were together. While, she had heard that unions between asari were frowned upon in asari society, she personally had found such an attitude towards that to be stupid… regressive considering how forward thinking the asari usually were.

"It's nice to find another odd couple living here," the asari named Ahsara address her with a faint smile for Vetara. Rubbing the back of her neck, all that Vetara could do was chuckle.

"This is Fatai Balarnia, she is in the same line of work as my husband… military attaché to the Council," Matena continued, gesturing to the serious looking turian, who inclined her head, her eyes narrowed as she seemed to have taken notice to how young Vetara was. She did not speak as Vetara to return the gesture.

"Finally this is Serafina, whom we just met," Matena introduced the human at long last, her mandibles flaring open to look kindly to the human woman. "You said you were in private family business, am I correct?"

The human called Serafina nodded curtly. There was something very wrong with the woman. While it was only natural nature for a newcomer to be uneasy with her surroundings, the human woman, a tall (by human female stands, Vetara supposed) rail thin brunette looked almost as out of place as Vetara was.

"You would be correct, Matena," the human woman confirmed before turning to face Vetara once again. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Andresen. My husband and I just moved in as well a few days ago. I figured we would finish getting unpacked, but here we are making introductions before we probably wanted to, right?"

Offering the human woman a faint smile of sorts, Vetara nodded and directed her focus to the group as a whole.

"Well… it's a pleasure to meet you all," she flat out lied to the group. "I'll be sure to send my husband out here to meet and greet. You'll find that you'll have much more to talk about him than I, I assure you."

The group laughed at Vetara's words, and as Vetara turned to leave, she felt her forearm was ensnared in Matena's talon. As Vetara looked at the woman questioningly, she remained silent as she felt herself be dragged a short ways from the group.

"We were just thinking about throwing a welcoming party for Aleksander and you, as well as Serfina's and her family," the diplomat spoke quietly so that she wouldn't be overheard. "It would be some time in the next few days… once everyone is settled of course. Would that be something you would be interested in?"

No. Not at all.

"Absolutely," Vetara agreed right away, ignoring the pulsing annoyance at the prospect of having to be seen out in public with Jack outside of mission oriented work. "That would be… delightful. It would be… nice. Aleksander and I don't exactly have many friends."

She hated she was agreeing to it, but Jack had made it clear that it was just something they had to do. Otherwise something would look awry, and someone would investigate and any good assassin worth their reputation would be looking. She would continue to follow Jack's lead, because if her hypothesis was correct, and she had no reason not to believe it wasn't then Jack had probably done something along this line before.

Vetara paused. Since when did she start feeling the need to address Hansen by his first name? She had only known the human for two days now. She wasn't anywhere near that degree of friendship. As if she ever wanted that to begin with.

The question plaguing her subconscious now, Vetara noticed Matena's mood shifted at the words she had spoken to a far greater subdued one. It appeared as though the older woman had really taken the disownment story Vetara had spun to heart. She was not surprised this was the case. Clans disowning members was a serious matter in turian society. It was probably agitated by the manner of which the apparent disownment occurred. Nothing said Vetara had messed up more than to be married to a different race.

"Don't worry," Matena reassured her as though she was a motherly figure. "I'll make sure the other guests treat the pair of you with respect."

Inclining her head, Vetara dismissed herself from the company of the diplomat and the watching group of women. She ignored the flurry of activity that erupted from the gathering as she left their company. To say all of this was an annoyance was an understatement, so with great resentment for Jack, Vetara did all that she could to push the interaction to the back of her mind.

Slapping her palm against her face as she stepped into the elevator, Vetara reprimanded herself for once again using his name. He was a charismatic man, of that she could not deny in the brief time she had come to know him, but she had to remember that it was all just a mask, meant lull her into a false sense of good relations with her partner. The man was still two steps away from being a criminal.

Even with this on her mind, there was still something… off about Hansen which she couldn't shake. She didn't have anything solid to work with and she imagined she would undoubtedly figure it out the longer she worked in conjunction with him, but she just knew something was off with him entirely. So while they worked to unravel this assassination plot, she would work to unravel him… How his own plots worked, not unravelled him on a physical level per say. He seemed quite comfortable doing that around her on his own accord.

Flustered and hoping that Jack… Hansen was awake and dressed; Vetara stepped out of the elevator and paused as she noticed a human man who was not Hansen and human child standing on her doorstep just waiting.

The child was too busy playing a game on his device to pay her any attention, but the man was staring at her with a carefully guarded expression on his face. He was dressed in expensive business attire, his long hair was peppered with grey and was slicked back leaving her with almost the impression it resembled asari tendrils.

Unbuttoning his jacket, the man stepped towards her, his expression remained stern in spite of his faint smile.

"Hello neighbour," the man greeted her. "I was just heading out with my son, when I noticed your floor was no longer unoccupied. We're new to the neighbourhood as well. Figured we should stop by and make our introductions."

"You wouldn't be Serafina's husband, right?" she inquired. Vetara watched in silence as the human nodded.

"So you met her…" the man spoke, his tone remaining firm, curt. "Yes, she was dragged to meet the rest of the neighbours. We were keeping a low profile, but then you and your husband arrived and made things that much easier for us. Is your husband in? I would like to meet him."

The last thing she wanted to do was be host to another human and a child. Vetara silently stepped forward, stepping around the man and stopped in front of her door.

"I am afraid, he's asleep right now," Vetara informed him as she moved by the two humans. She turned back and flared her mandibles into a smile, ignoring the expression of revulsion the man barely attempted to conceal. "Why don't you drop by this evening and we can properly receive you and your wife."

Bowing her head slightly out of force of habit rather than a sense of genuine respect, Vetara turned away to open the door.

"How about instead you go ahead and wake Jack up for me, Miss Calarian."

Vetara froze and slowly rounded back to face the man who had used her name. Her mind flooding with the implications, her first instinct was to pull her pistol off her of her waist. The man seemed to guess that was what Vetara was going to do, and curiously, the man held up his hand. He did not go for a gun, he just held up his hand as though that would relax her after being called out on the spot.

"You've wandered into a very paranoid working environment, turian. I can appreciate your terror, but I wouldn't go for my gun if I were you," the man spoke again, his hand lowering back to his side for a moment before it extended out to the child and added. "At least not in front of my son; you will scare him. He's a sensitive boy. Pull the gun and you're liable to turn him into the cowardly thing he actually is."

Glancing at the human boy for a moment, the foreign phrase she heard was unclear to her, but the child appeared almost devastated by it. It only served to drive the instinct in her that this was not a blood child to the man; and if it was, it didn't make any of it better. Not when this was technical abuse.

Silently, Vetara stepped forward and in between the boy and the man, ignoring the protest of the child as she pushed him backwards. She drew her pistol, and held it at her side. She didn't want to use it, and she didn't want to kill this man. However she had no qualms shooting out his kneecaps and dragging the bastard inside to question him further.

"Who's to say that's your son?" she shot back at the man, her eyes narrowing hard at him. "How do I know you haven't abducted him… and the wife outside? I imagine that she would be your back up."

The man remained silent, glowering at her. Hidden just inside his open jacket was a gun, barely concealed by the coat. The gun in her hands which was held at her side limply, lifted slightly as she took a defensive shooting stance, both of her talons wrapping around her sidearm.

The man's expression remained blank, but he did slowly extend his hands out to show he had no intentions to pull his weapon out.

"That's remarkably wise of you to draw that conclusion. I was under the impression your father pulled strings for a nomination, but it seems that your files were right about ear marking you for a criminal investigation unit. Between your age and you be a turian, I am surprised you have this level of intuition… perhaps dealing in Jack's shit has to have helped you fit into this life."

As she silently agreed with the human, there was still sort of a strange flare up in her. Like only she was allowed to take that sort of stance. This man was an intruder – a potential threat, even. Whatever it was, Vetara watched wearily as the man stepped forward.

"You're right to be paranoid, of course; and you are right. Serafina is indeed my partner, my back up… but we are very much married," the man pressed on, his eyes glancing to the pistol in Vetara's hand as though he was thinking something he shouldn't have. Glancing to the child behind her, he added. "Now that I have been honest with you, you'll step away from my son, or I will forget my manners and put you back in your place, you ugly, overgrown _bitch_."

" _Jack!"_

The shout of the name from the child behind her, caught Vetara's attention immediately, forcing her outrage to be diverted from the man, and too Jack… Hansen… standing there in the doorway, thankfully he was dressed. He stood there with half a grin exposed on his face. His attention was not on the tension between the human and the turian adults, but rather the child that rushed him.

"Well hello there, my main man!" Jack announced out loud, his hand flat and reached out to the child as he added. "Give me five!"

Utterly confused, Vetara watched as the man and the child slapped their hands together. She looked away from them, directing her focus back to the man. Hansen had confirmed they knew each other enough for her to retract her pistol. She exhaled and maintained her sharp glare at the man who had denigrated her so openly. She had a theory about who this man was.

A heavy hand hit against her shoulder, staking her solid stance in spite of her best effort to remain locked in place. Standing next to her was Hansen; his opposite arm was wrapped around the shoulder of the boy.

"Vetara Calarian, I would like for you to meet our benefactor, my boss David James Merrick and this is his son, James, and I presume Serafina is skulking about outside?" Hansen introduced the family to the turian casually. A grin that didn't meet Hansen's eyes returned as he pressed his hand into the child's hair and he added. "And look at you kid, you're growing like a weed, man!"

Understandably annoyed by Hansen's rubbing of his hair, the child named James broke the grasp the man had on him and stepped out in front of him. He gave Hansen a shove in the arm, which Hansen reacted to a little more dramatically than usual.

"I grew two inches, Jack!" the boy said proudly.

Hansen clapped his hands together.

"Well, holy shit kiddo, nice one!" Hansen exclaimed back as though he was proud of the boy for a growth spurt which was ridiculous to Vetara to celebrate over something completely out of his control. "Tell you what, maybe your old man will let us hang out now that we're neighbours."

The child looked back to his father, only to find him well beyond disapproving the suggestion. Vetara could not help but agree that it was a bad idea to take in the children into their safe house while they were in between their investigation. Still… Vetara could not help but be curious to the reaction to the child being so… well, warm and inviting. She supposed the employer to David James Merrick probably had close ties to the family.

"So long as a cuttlebone is living with you, that won't be happening," Merrick stated, his eyes directed unabashedly at the turian. He lingered his glare for a while longer before he directed his attention to his son in order to add. "James, you got to see Jack, so go to your mother."

Vetara felt her talons roll up into a fist as she glared at the man who had used a slur against her. She wanted nothing better than to forget her place, to reach out and strike the older human to the ground and keep hitting him until he stopped moving. With the rage flowing through every fibre of her body, the only thing that held her back from knocking Merrick to the ground had been the child, who was watching all of this unfold before his eyes.

As much as she resented the man, she wasn't about to beat him senseless in front of a son… and Jack, she supposed. Inwardly she screamed at herself for not using his surname once again.

The child named James hesitated to answer his father's order. Instead he remained in place, looking up to Jack for him for an intervention. Smiling to the boy, he shook his head and stepped back. Hansen knew better then to know to contradict the father's order.

"Right now, _boy_!" Merrick snapped at the child, the harsh tone startling even Vetara. It was a shocking display of intimidation the father used against his own child.

The boy nodded to his father, his eyes downcast. He had been in this position before. Silently the child inched past Vetara, who looked down on him with a small inkling of sympathy for the position he was in. He did not look up to her, nor did he look to his father, who did not bother to pay the boy any sort of attention. Instead the elder Merrick brushed by his own son, and entered Hansen and Vetara's home, ignoring his son as he stepped into elevator and after looking to the back of his father's head as though hoping he would look back.

Merrick didn't. He instead closed the condominium door behind him, leaving Jack and Vetara to turn their full focus on the child standing in the elevator, clearly devastated by his father's indifference, but unwilling to make a noise about it.

"Don't worry, kiddo, you can drop by whenever you want," Jack rumbled to the boy. "What your old man doesn't know won't hurt him, right?"

Jack's question had been directed to Vetara. As uneasy as she was to both have a child in their safe house and the child was being egged on by Jack… Hansen, to break free of his father's command, Vetara nodded in reluctant agreement. The only reason she agreed was fuelled primarily by her overwhelming distaste for the father.

The boy's morose expression softened slightly, he smiled and nodded, waving his hand over the panel. The elevator doors closed and immediately Hansen smile for the boy vanished as he turned to face her.

"He's rough, but he has good intentions," he immediately defended the bastard he worked for. "Remember what I said about keeping your mouth shut around him? Now you know why. Whatever you do, do not antagonize him."

Vetara remained locked jawed as she stared Hansen. She was dazed by the fury she felt bubbling inside of her.

"He's a… he's a _jerk_!" she snapped, surprising herself using a human word to express her opinion on the man.

Hansen stepped forward, his hand reaching out to grab her by the shoulder once again. He exhaled slowly and nodded in apparent agreement with her.

"That's an insult to jerks. He's an asshole," Hansen corrected her in a carefully controlled tone. "He was just getting a reading on you. But… as a favour to me, let me lead here?"

Vetara locked eyes with the man and slowly she agreed with a smallest of nods. Watching as Hansen moved towards the door, she silently decided that as always, she was not going to stir conflict so soon. How long her passivity would last was unknown. She was not this usually submissive to anyone, it came from being the youngest of twelve children.

"You can pay me back right now by confirming a suspicion I have," the turian spoke to her human counterpart after a moment or two of silence. "And before you say anything, I'm not asking a personal question, so it does not fall in the confines of your game."

Silently, she watched as Hansen arched his brow at her, he appeared genuinely curious and amused by this turn of events. Exhaling, she stepped forward to join him once again. The question was a new one she had since her interaction with Merrick. That meeting alone was enough to raise a curiosity that she needed to be dealt with immediately.

"You're not actually a xenophobe, are you?" she blurted out to the man. "…I can understand if you have some reservations about other races. I do as well, to be honest… but Merrick is clearly one, and as... _annoying_ as you are... you're not nearly that bad about it. It feels like it's all just a test you put others through... another game you're playing just to test your boundaries..."

She fell silent, as she watched Hansen's thin mouth expression remained locked in place. He did not offer any physical signals to confirm or deny the theory.

"I believe I told you at some point about the need to act. To present a face for the world for to assumptions for," he spoke finally, his voice's neutrality finally tinged with humour. "Come on; let's get this out of the way."

Watching as Hansen made his way back to the door; Vetara nodded and ignoring the strange elation at the implication Hansen had made, followed his lead back into their safe house, hoping beyond hope that she would be able to keep herself in check.

…

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…

 **Sorry for the delay, It's just that I became a father a few weeks ago… to an overstimulated Chocolate Labrador puppy. Cute, but a biter of everything he can get a hold of. As you can imagine it's been busy. That and I've been character building for this story. Not just for Vetara and Jack, but others. The plot was all there, but I had few characters built, so in my downtime that's what I've been doing.**

 **I do have a question that I have had plaguing me for a month now: Would you like to see Hansen as a central character for the story as well?**

 **Instead of it being like Eden, where the focus is on the opposite character every other chapter, instead every seven chapters the focus would be shifted to the opposite character so for example chapters 1-7 were Vetara oriented the next 7-14 Jack and so on and so forth. Give it a thought; leave a review about it, PM me etc.**

 **Thank you for reading!**


	8. Chapter Eight

**I decided this would be a primary Vetara story, but the occasional examination of Hansen was warranted. Every so often I will come back to him.**

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 **...**

 **Chapter Eight**

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Exhaling as he closed the door behind his boss, Jack Hansen leaned his back against the door and looked at the turian woman who was pacing back and forth, her head bowed.

She was clearly in a state of rage, but she was refusing to admit it to him out of a fear of exposing herself for him to judge and exploit. It was her M.O since he brought her neck deep into this mess. While yes, he would probably judge her, he would never say it out loud, and he found no purpose to exploit anything she did or said. She was too young for any of her sins to really have a real world effect.

It seemed like she was frustrated by the lack of action on their part beyond their first step into the nest. It was her youth speaking, and she wanted nothing better than to wrap up this investigation in a few days like it was an action vid or procedural cop show. It wasn't. This sort of work was tedious, and it wasn't exactly the first time for him. He spent the better part of 2164 stuck in Syria undercover, just waiting for INI to pop up out of the shadows to spread its terror campaign.

This, however, was a different thing altogether. This was in the chaos of the Middle east, which remained virtually locked in this sort of violence for the better part of two centuries, this was the Citadel and operatives working on the citadel would be as careful as they could, and they wouldn't make their move on Vetara or him any time soon. For now they were in a drawn out chess game, and following Vetara and his response to their first move, whoever was in charge of this was going to sit back and play this out as patiently and methodologically as they could.

This was why decided arbitrarily for this married couple cover with new identities and the lot for her. If they went on without this sort of cover, it would not be long before whoever they faced would reach out and make Vetara suffer through loss after loss of her family. From what he gathered, she had an extensive one, and between that and his inability to gauge the exact force projection which this group had.

As for him, he didn't exactly have a lot of people in his life to worry all that much about. He burned those bridges a long time ago. There was nobody in his life to risk anymore. While this was good thing for his professional career, there was still a small part of him that yearned for an end to it; but he knew better than to think anything on that front was about to change any time soon. Not after everything that had happened.

Glancing to Vetara, she was still grumbling to herself in her native language. Jack could understand why Vetara felt this way about him. There was no denying that Merrick could be awful. But Merrick wasn't a bad man at his core. As for the language, well it caught him off guard. It was a bunch of angry chirping and clicking noises, leaving him with impression she was an overgrown Falcon or something. So much for him figuring out how to listen in without a translator, if that was her language, he could only wonder how they managed to make contact with the asari in the first place. It probably involved a lot of banging, which seemed to be the standard operating procedure for the asari.

Rubbing his face, Jack cleared his throat theatrically. It was enough of a noise to get his partner's attention.

"Come on," he announced to her, nodding to the door as his thumb pointed in the direction as well.

From across the room he could hear Vetara's mandibles clicked as she cocked her head to one side to stare at him like he was disturbing her personal ravings. Her hands… Talons… whatever they were fidgeting as she realized his attention was directed on her.

"What… What do you want now?" she fumed at him, her translator activated once again as her anger at her interactions with her new employer became public once again.

"I want to go check out that park, we'll walk and talk, and we have to get out there and act like man and bird wife anyways…" Hansen answered her, taking a small personal delight as he watched the young turian jerk her body right around to confront him. Realizing quickly that he was perhaps coming off as a little crass, he added. "That was a joke, if it makes you feel better you can call me ape husband… we need pet names anyways, right? Turians do that as well I hope."

She did not answer him. She refused to answer him. Hansen rubbed his neck. Perhaps it was time to relax on needling her for responses, testing her limits to see just how far she could be pushed. Well, at least for the time being anyway.

It wasn't too long ago that he had hit rock bottom, between everything that happened, Hansen's alcoholism worsened to the point where he was too perpetually obliterated to be a functional person anymore. After his divorce and subsequent exile from his home from Marina and the children, he ended reaching a point where he had a gun to his head. It was only at this point that one clear, coherent thought entered his mind:

He wasn't going to end up a fucking embarrassingly tragic cliché.

With that in mind, Jack scrapped what was left of him and ended up on the Merrick residence at around three in the morning of September 13th, 2166. Merrick had every right to fire him on the spot.

But he didn't.

Instead the boss brought him into his home. They talked throughout the early morning and Merrick spent the next three days drying Jack out. While he didn't remember a lot of what happened, and Merrick wasn't exactly forthcoming about it to this day, he had somehow convinced Jack to voluntarily submit to a rehabilitation programme. It was a top of the line rehab. The sort that celebrities checked into, which Hansen ended getting clean with. Interesting experience.

When Jack got out, he found himself still employed under Merrick. _'Pay back the expenses'_ was the explanation to his continued employment. Funny thing about that, his wages were not garnished at all. Merrick was strange like that; but that not to suggest he was some sort of benevolent guy. The moment he was safely clean for several months post rehab, Merrick shipped him off Africa for a couple of dirty bushfire wars for reasons that were above his pay grade. It probably involved the diamond trade, or more likely to protect the warlord's grip on the region. It was probably the latter. Still, in spite of the dirty nature of killing coked up 18 year old Africans armed with ancient firearms, it served as a means for Jack to scrape his life back in order.

Everything was different now. Now he was all alone, and that took some time to get used to. His wife got an ironclad divorce. She had come to hate him so much that she forewent seeking alimony to keep sole custody. She wanted nothing to do with him, not even with his money. After what happened, he couldn't blame her for the treatment, but it didn't mean he didn't resent her back. It had been four years since he saw either of them.

He had family back home in Odense. A Mom and a Dad, his sister named Elizabeth, and a younger brother, Peter. He lurked their social media to keep up with them on occasion but he hadn't talked to them since his collapse into alcoholism. They didn't get along about anything. They were humanitarians who were skeptical about his initial decision to serve in the Alliance and pushed to their limits when he became a _'soldier of exploitation'_ in his mother's opinion, in his father's screamed words he was _'punishing himself with his vices because he was doing something unnatural'_. Father was mad, and the old man rarely raised his voice beyond a regular speaking tone; and with that, his family was pretty much done with him.

He toyed with the idea of reconnecting with them after he got sober, but… well, it never felt right. If they had wanted him back, they would have asked. He wasn't about to get his hopes up on a longshot.

So here he was now, late thirties, without a family, without friends outside of work. All he had was a boss who kept him busy and a bank account which kept accumulating wealth which he never touched beyond basic amenities. He didn't have much time to touch it. If he did end up idle, he would abuse it, and each day the idleness and isolation he lived in would grow his temptation to relapse leaps and bounds. He didn't go back to what he was. He just couldn't risk that.

Which lead him back to his latest distraction: his new double life with Vetara Calarian.

Vetara Calarian was an oddity of a turian. The moment she blurted out she had no will to kill, it got interesting for him. Here stood a turian who ran contrary to everything he learned about the turians during the First Contact War. He suspected there would be these sorts of anomalies amidst the billions of turians out there, but in his years of interactions with the aliens, he never found one who presented this trait.

She was extremely guarded in the way she presented herself to him. Like she was trying to be some sort of model turian, but knew she was failing because she didn't quite have the marshal spirit of the prototypical turian. She radiated a sweet sort of naivety which came from her youth. She seemed genuinely shocked when he was candid about his problems to her within their first days of knowing each other. If he was being honest, he was surprised as well that he did it. Under most other circumstances he'd never admit something like that so quickly, but there he was telling her it.

He glanced her way as the elevator they stepped into closed and made its descent. He supposed there was something about her. It was that youthful naivety again. She wasn't jaded or hardened by a lot of what life would throw at her. It left him with the horrible feeling that he was going to make that change soon enough.

As the two of them stepped out of the elevator and left the apartment building, Hansen immediately took notice to a couple of women chatting away animatedly. Most notable of which was Serafina Merrick, who looked uncomfortable to be in the presence of the aliens talking to her.

Serafina was… well… she was a whole story in herself.

The women took notice to them. One of them… the turian diplomat seemed to look ready to approach them, when Vetara reached out and gripped his arm.

"Sorry we cannot stop and chat, I am taking him on a walk!" she called out to them, her free arm waving in their direction.

Unsure of how to feel about Vetara essentially treating him like an animal who needed to go take a shit, Jack waved to them, locked eyes with Serafina briefly before she turned away and with that excuse to avoid interaction given to the group, Vetara walked him away towards the park at a quickened pace so not to give any of them a chance to intercept them.

As soon as they entered the park – admittedly a beautiful display of the Citadel's majesty – and out of the line of sight of the neighbours, Vetara dropped her hold on his arm, her arms crossing over her chest as she held her held low. She was clearly had something on her mind which she didn't want to talk about. He wouldn't ask in spite of his own curiosity.

He allowed this silence to linger for a little while longer as a couple of salarians passed them.

"You behaved with restraint back there," he murmured to her as they were left alone once again. "That means a lot to me that you did that."

In front of him, Hansen paid careful attention to the body language of the turian. While the turian collective ego believed they were immune to presenting any sort of tell, it did not take long to notice the flaws in their thought process. Especially as Vetara tightened up at the statement, as anyone else would.

"I didn't do it for you, she replied, her voice low, the echo in her inflection wobbled somewhat, as though she was by no means confident in her declaration. "Anything to expedite all of this, I will happily do it."

Hansen nodded to himself. It was a delusional concept the woman was offering, but he could see why she would hold onto any shred of hope. She was smart though, it would not be long before she understood on her own the gravity of commitment he had volunteered her to would become.

"Are you really that quick to want to leave me?" He asked her, taking a step forward.

"Yes!" she blurted out.

Vetara then did something he hadn't expected. She turned around to face him, and her expression, as alien as it was, had given off the impression she had said something terribly offensive to him. He wasn't being serious, but perhaps she did not pick up on the sarcasm, or just hadn't noticed it. Whatever it was, she seemed like she regretted her terse response.

Glancing side to side as though she did not want to be overheard, Vetara took a step closer back to the human. Her talon tightened and released several times as she seemed to be stuck on how she was going to word whatever it was she needed to say with it offending him.

To say this was a confusing reaction was an understatement. It had never bothered her before to say whatever it was that was on her mind. He wondered if it was because before at least she had some sort of separation between the two of them. Living together as a couple in the eyes of others meant she probably felt she could not have the same sort of freedom of speech as before. She would have to live with the immediate consequences of her words.

At least that was what it seemed to him. She still hadn't clued in that he wasn't exactly easily offended by anything anymore.

"Well… no…" she finally spoke, amending her initial reaction. " I don't mean to be mean about it, It's just…it's just. You… _you have completely upended everything in my life!"_

God help him for doing it, but Hansen grinned at her as Vetara's rage suddenly made him think he was in a verbal argument with an overgrown Blue Heron. Yes, yes he certainly did do that.

"I get it-"

"No, you _clearly_ don't get it if you're grinning like idiot!" she snapped back, cutting him off as her voice rose several octaves. "Do you know how hard I have been working on trying to leave the impression on my colleagues that I was not a simple case of nepotism? My father fast tracked me into security services; my father pulled his strings to get me my posting. I did not ask for it, but he did it anyways. He didn't do it to my elder siblings, he did it to me. It is as though I was a still an infant to him, a child who needed his special consideration. I have done everything in my power to overturn the perception, and then you came along and undid all I have done in a matter of hours!"

Hansen crossed his arms over his chest, his brow arching.

"So, this is a matter of your ego that drives this fascinating resentment of me…"

The statement was a shot across the bow. Vetara Calarian looked like she was ready to kick his ass again. If she tried to, she wouldn't have an easy time like she did the last time she did it. This time around he would not be so passive about getting choked out.

"N-no... no it is not like that at all!" she sputtered at him; she looked ready to rant and rave, but then she paused and added. "Oh… right, you're being _awful_ again. That's what I need right now. Thank you for that."

Huffing out a small laugh which caught up in his throat, Hansen nodded. He said he was going to lighten up on his experimentations with her mental limits, and he meant it.

"I'm trying to figure you out, Calarian," he enlightened her. "It's not a particularly easy task. You see, with me, you can ask me whatever your heart desires and I'll probably have something for you to hear, something you can disseminate and draw conclusions from. But you, you're young. You don't have much in the way of a past I can paint a picture of you from, so I have to poke and prod and dig into you to see what you are."

Vetara's mandibles flared open. It was an action that still nearly made him physically wince. It looked so peculiar to him.

"And what is it that you see in me?"

That was the question he had been asking himself since about an hour after he met her. He didn't have it all down, but he supposed she deserved to know what he had observed from her so far. It would give her something to work on while they waited for the first blow back.

"Your insecurity is holding you back, letting what others say to you affect you to such a degree that everything you are doing is meant to please other people and not to your benefit," he informed her, watching the turian shift in place in a display of clear discomfort. "You've clearly read far too much into your father's actions to help further you in your own career to a point where his affection for you has been mistaken as favouritism. I get that turian's pride meritocracy and scorn any sort of nepotism; but you have taken those virtues far too much to heart…"

He paused and watched her eyes darted across his face as she absorbed what he said.

"Let go of that shit, and underneath the self-flagellation you put yourself though, you'll find a woman who could be fearless," was his final conclusion, his mouth curving back into a smile. To let Vetara know that it was all going to be okay.

His words had left him feeling like a cheap fortune teller. Using a lot of cliché tripe about confidence… but sometimes that cheap tripe had the desired effect; and in Vetara's case, it seemed as though it had broken through the defensive posturing she was locked into every second she was around him. She stared at him, like had offered her something meaningful for her to think over.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

Jerking her head back with a shake, Vetara unconsciously reached out, a talon taking his arm as though she needed some sort of sort from him.

"…Yes…" she got out in a daze. "I- ahhhh… I don't think anyone has said anything like that to me before."

Jack's gaze lingered on the turian.

"Then perhaps someone needed to say that to you…" he murmured back. "How is your combat training?"

Letting go of his forearm, Vetara blinked at him stupidly at the sudden change of pace he made. It was starting to get a little awkward. They both needed to take a step back.

"Excuse me?" she inquired, her head tilting to one side, her eyes narrowed as though he had insulted her. He wasn't.

"Your combat training," he repeated as he stepped around her in a slow circle. "We're going to have a lot of down time, and I need you ready for anything. So I'm going to instruct you with what I know. We're going to train the C-Sec and turian combat education out of you. It's something anyone half a talented in observation will detect, then start to put the pieces together to figure out who you are and who they can hurt and kill to get to you. Your old ways… they can't be your natural instincts anymore. So I need to make you in to what you hate the most: me.

Vetara did not offer any sort of protests. She seemed to be grasping the full extent to what their partnership was to entail.

"I don't hate you, though..." she softly refuted, her head bowed.

Jack stopped his pacing and started at her as her declaration rang in his ears. His pause in movement was enough to motivate the turian woman to look up, meeting his eyes with her yellowish eyes.

"You are annoying, and a hassle to deal with, of that there is no means for you to _refute_ …" she elaborated, a note of coy humour spreading into her words. "…but _hate_ is a too strong description for what I think of you."

Remaining still and silent for a moment or two, Hansen reached out and took the surprised woman by her shoulder and pressed her close.

"I wouldn't be so quick to say that," he warned her cheerfully as he guided her onward deeper into the park. "It'll give us a chance to teach you about checking your corners. God knows how much you hate doing that."

And yes... yes he revelled in her outrage once again. It was just too good to pass up.

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…

 **Thanks for reading.**


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